You Are Not a Stranger Here in Queereaders

Jun 19, 2016 Thomas rated it really liked it

Shelves: lgbtq, short-stories-for-fun, adult-fiction

4.5 stars

The first four short stories in this collection ripped my heart to shreds. I have never felt so moved by short fiction; Adam Haslett has this stunning, almost scary ability to make you care so goddamn much about his characters even when they inhabit 30 pages or less. His stories focus on grief, mental illness, and sexuality. Some of my favorites include: "Notes to My Biographer," in which a mentally ill father visits his son for the first time in years; "The Beginnings of Grief," about 4.5 stars

The first four short stories in this collection ripped my heart to shreds. I have never felt so moved by short fiction; Adam Haslett has this stunning, almost scary ability to make you care so goddamn much about his characters even when they inhabit 30 pages or less. His stories focus on grief, mental illness, and sexuality. Some of my favorites include: "Notes to My Biographer," in which a mentally ill father visits his son for the first time in years; "The Beginnings of Grief," about a boy who forms an abusive relationship with a classmate to cope with his parents' deaths; and "Devotion," in which two siblings both wait for the arrival of an old friend.

I have developed a serious author crush on Adam Haslett after reading both Imagine Me Gone and You Are Not a Stranger Here. His writing exhibits remarkable restraint and communicates so much emotion without resorting to dramatics. His empathy and compassion for his characters literally made me put this book down twice to go on a walk, just so I could continue to appreciate his care-filled prose with a clear head. And as an aspiring psychologist, I love his portrayals of characters with mental illnesses and their family members. He captures their immense pain, resilience, and bittersweet joy that comes with learning how to live in the dark.

Back to why I have a huge crush on Mr. Haslett: he has three degrees (a B.A., an M.F.A., and a J.D.), he writes about challenging topics I care a lot about, and we are only 25 years apart, so I think I have a fighting chance. Though I guess I would feel content just reading more of his wonderful writing. Either way, I give You Are Not a Stranger Here 4.5 stars because even though a few of the stories feel less complete or compelling than the first four and the last one, the stories that succeed in this collection impacted me just as much as some of my favorite full-length novels. Check this book out if you want your heart punctured, if you want your literary reminder that you have feelings, that you are, indeed, human. ...more

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Dec 26, 2015 Charlie Smith rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Original review available at my blog, HereWeAreGoing, here: https://herewearegoing.wordpress.com/...

Why did I order this book from the library? I wish I could recall where first I heard about it, who recently wrote about it, which website or Twitter-Literati recommended it, but, I didn’t share decades with Gary Indiana and David Bowie and not suffer some brain-cell loss in the process.

However it came to me, I am grateful. A collection of nine short stories dealing with disturbing degrees of alie Original review available at my blog, HereWeAreGoing, here: https://herewearegoing.wordpress.com/...

Why did I order this book from the library? I wish I could recall where first I heard about it, who recently wrote about it, which website or Twitter-Literati recommended it, but, I didn’t share decades with Gary Indiana and David Bowie and not suffer some brain-cell loss in the process.

However it came to me, I am grateful. A collection of nine short stories dealing with disturbing degrees of alienation from the world, from others, from the self, this is a well-written though hardly easy read. I devoured all the stories in a two-day binge and that was not, I think, the ideal way to appreciate this work. One should space these stories out, as having them all too quickly follow one another is akin to spending too much time with that friend whose life is one after another tragedy and trauma and who, one suspects, enjoys the agony just a little more than they ought. Too much.

Still, nice work, the opening story, Notes to My Biographer, about a schizophrenic father on a manic high was especially compelling and wrenching. The Beginnings of Grief was a horrifying study in where the numbing effects of loss and despair can strand a person. Devotion, about a brother and sister and the man they both loved and the secrets and lies between them is beautifully wrought, its construction my favorite in the collection and it contained my favorite passage, this;

He won their games of hide-and-go-seek because he never closed his eyes completely, and could see which way she ran. He could still remember the peculiar anger and frustration he used to feel after he followed her to her hiding place and tapped her on the head.

That’s a perfect evocation of what goes on between a brother and sister, the summing up of a relationship in which one’s own misdeeds being allowed are a source of anger. He cheats. He is angry because she has accepted and forgiven it. There is every indication she knows, early hinting of which is finally revealed to be true. He needs not to lose more than she needs to win, a flaw in him to which she acquiesces, which infuriates him. That’s some glorious imagery there.

But, the story by which I was most moved was Reunion. A fellow has contracted AIDS, is dying, and the emotional and physical peregrinations through which he chooses to contort as he moves toward his end, the letters through which he shares this with his father, a devastating telling. ...more

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Mar 01, 2009 Djrmel rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories, fiction, contemporary

All of the stories in this collection deal with characters that are suffering emotionally. Sometimes, it is because of psychosis - in The Volunteer a woman who's break with reality occurred during the birth and death of her only child is befriended by a young man going through first love while his family fails to deal with it's own mental illness. Sometimes it is grief - in The Beginnings of Grief a young man masks the pain of the death of his parents by subjecting himself to abuse from an equal ...more

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