Tag Archives: Short Stories

I am very pleased to welcome TLC Book tours back to The Book Binder’s Daughter today with a collection of short stories by Diane Cook.  I invite you to read my review, learn a little about the author and visit some of the other stops on the tour.

My Review:

Man V. Nature is an eclectic group of stories and each one has a bizarre or unexpected twist. The story “Moving On” begins with a widow packing up her house because her husband has just died and she is beginning a new phase in her life.  But the twist in this story is that the government has set up a women’s shelter for widows who wait there until they are chosen by a new man to remarry.  The women in the shelter have a bit of a feeling like animals in a shelter who are waiting to be rescued and find their forever homes.  The widow in the story is chosen by a man after 8 months, which, she is told, is a respectable amount of time to wait for a new husband.

The story that I found to be the most bizarre in this collection is “Somebody’s Baby.”  Linda has just given birth to a baby girl and as her husband drives her home from the hospital she sees a man on her lawn who is waiting to steal her baby.  Linda does everything she can to protect her daughter, but the man sneaks in and takes the baby anyway.  The entire neighbor and Linda’s husband tell her that this is normal and that the man takes at least one or two babies from every family and eventually she will have one that she can keep.  When Linda’s second baby is also taken by the man, she decides that she will track the man down and get her children back.  But the neighbors try to convince her that it is a bad idea and she should just try to have more children.

In the title story, “Man V. Nature,” three old friends are stranded in a boat on a lake when it has run out of gas.  They jump into a lifeboat and abandon the main vessel when they think they spot land.  As they are adrift on the plastic lifeboat for days they start to have conversations that reveal hidden secrets and desires.  Will any of them make it to safety and be rescued?

If you want an interesting collection of short stories then I would definitely give MAN V. NATURE by Diane Cook at try.  There stories are unique and will be like nothing else you have read.

About The Author:
Diane Cook’s fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, Tin House, Zoetrope: All Story, Guernica, Salt Hill, and Redivider. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and on This American Life, where she worked as a radio producer for six years. She earned an MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Teaching fellow. She recently moved to Oakland, CA after a decade in Brooklyn.

Other Stops on the Tour:

Today I welcome TLC Blog Tours to The Book Binder’s Daughter with a collection of short stories.  You are welcome to read my review, learn a little about the author, enter the giveaway (US/Canada) and visit the other stops on the blog tour.

My Review:

I like it when collections of short stories have a theme running throughout and this is definitely the case with Flings.  In each story, the character or characters seem to be at a crossroads and are trying to determine what they should do with the next stage of their lives.  In the first story, “Flings,” a group of friends have just graduated from college and all 6 of them are having a hard time figuring out what to do now that the structure and safety of college life is gone.  They try different careers and relationships and it takes a while for each of them to settle into a comfortable place in life.  I found the beginning of the story confusing as the author kept jumping from character to character and the verb tenses kept changing.  But I realized that the confusion in the narrative mimicked the tumultuous circumstances in the characters’ lives.

In “Mike’s Song,” a middle-aged man is taking his two grown children to see a Phish concert.  We learn as they are driving to the concert that the dad, whose name is Mike, cheated on his wife and as a result broke up their family.  Mike is trying to navigate his new life without a wife and children around.  He contemplates selling his house, he awkwardly sends texts to his inappropriately young girlfriend, and attempts to enjoy a Phish concert where he feels out of place.  Will this stage in Mike’s life bring him any happiness or did he throw away his family for no good reason?

Seventy-two year old Carol finds herself alone for the first time in her life and is trying to figure out how to deal with the quiet.  In this story, aptly named “Carol, Alone”, a widow looks back on her early life in New York where she was a teacher and married with two children.  Carol’s life has always been busy and full of people and even when she and her husband Gerald move to Florida her son’s family moves near them as well.  Now that Gerald has passed and her son is occupied with his own wife and children, Carol can’t quite figure out what to do everyday to make herself feel useful.  To make matters worse, she is dealing with a serious bout of insomnia so she has to endure feeling alone day and night.  The ending to this story is abrupt and clever.  Of all the stories in the collection, I enjoyed this one the most.

One of my favorite ways to get to know an author is to read his or her short stories.  Short stories are not a big time investment and if you decide that you like the stories, then you can move on to an author’s other, longer works.  After reading Flings, I am definitely interested in exploring Justin Taylor’s other writing.

About The Author:

Justin Taylor is the author of the novel “The Gospel of Anarchy” and the story collection “Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever.”

The Millions called “The Gospel of Anarchy” a “bold casserole of sensual encounter and deranged proclamation… Loudly, even rapturously, Taylor succeeds in making the clamoring passion of his characters real, their raw, mercurial yearning a cry for ‘a world newly established.’ In terms of acts of God, “The Gospel of Anarchy” is a tornado, tearing up the hill where rock ‘n roll and cult meet.”

The New York Times raved that “Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever ” is a “spare, sharp book” which “documents a deep authority on the unavoidable confusion of being young, disaffected and human. … [T]he most affecting stories in … are as unpredictable as a careening drunk. They leave us with the heavy residue of an unsettling strangeness, and a new voice that readers — and writers, too — might be seeking out for decades to come.”

His stories have been published in many top literary journals, and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, BookForum and The Believer, among other publications.

He lives in New York.  To learn more about Justin visit his website: http://www.justindtaylor.net/.

Giveaway:

The publisher and TLC tours are giving away one copy of Flings to someone in the US or Canada.  All you have to do is leave a comment below and tell me you want to win!  Giveaway ends 9/17 and the winner will be notified via email and will have 48 hours to respond before another winner is chosen.

To see the complete list of stops on the Flings blog tour click on the TLC picture below:

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