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What Members Thought
I LOVE Aimee Bender. These short stories are so beautiful and filled with emotion. Bender does not let the limits of "reality" or the confines of narrative structure interfere with her storytelling. How can you not love characters with hands of fire and ice, a high school mermaid who drinks beer through her hair, an atypical lonely librarian? Bender finds the humanity in each character and honesty in every situation she imagines.
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One of the best short story collections I have ever read. Aimee Bender does something with language, story structure and brevity that nobody else is doing today. I loved how some many of her stories were set up in this traditional fariy tale introduction, and the main characters always hinted towards the trapped, the perverse and the unknown. Beautifully rendered and engaging, these are stories I will come back to again and again.
Aimee Bender writes effortless stories, which is kind of a backhanded compliment. These stories are entertaining, but they're also willfully quirky in a scattershot kind of way—a quality that grates after a few stories read in quick succession. There's no doubt in my mind of Bender's skill, but I'd like to see her focus her wit towards a more sustained narrative, where the quirks and the sex have to MEAN something.
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Feb 16, 2009
Amber Lessa
marked it as to-read
May 09, 2011
Marie Wreath
marked it as to-read
Oct 05, 2012
Ioanna
marked it as to-read
May 26, 2015
Kara
marked it as to-read
