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Summary: Ms. Houston leaves you once again wanting more
Review: Love the short stories that Pam Houston writes. She leaves you wanting to run off on your own adventure. She is able to tell you the story and make you believe you are there. Having been to "Hope" her descriptions continue to make me want to "GO WEST"
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Summary: Lucy tries to make sense of life, death and Suzanne the cat.
Review: Lucy is a very real and very loveable heorine, despite of and because of her very human flaws. In this collection of short stories, she tries to make sense of life, death, her childhood, being single in a partnered world, and why Suzanne the cat received more good will--and food--from her parents than she did. My favorite story is the title story: "Waltzing the Cat," where Lucy puzzles out her relationship with her parents after her mother's death. While being uproariously funny, it is at the same time an extremely poignant and moving story. I love Houston's humor and attention to detail.
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Summary: a terrible disappointment
Review: Ms. Houston seems to have fallen for her own press, and perhaps to have written some of it. This thinly veiled autobiographical material is as overblown as she is; uninspired, a mishmash of poor story telling and self aggrandizing.
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Summary: Insipid, autobiographical self-aggrandizing drivel
Review: Once again Houston demonstrates an ego matched only by her limited imagination. First and foremost these "stories" belong in non-fiction or autobiography, not fiction. Throughout there is the sense that Houston cannot create a world other than the one she knows, and worse, that she assumes this world is one her reader will automatically recognize and accept. Time and again complex feelings and layered situations are summarized with one-liners more appropriate to soap opera than literature. Finally the reader simply grows tired of being lectured to and spoon-fed Houston's "wisdon" about life, love and everything. And finally the material and style seems simply a re-working of Cowboys Are My Weakness, as though the author feels a winning combination was struck in that first collection and must not be strayed from. This collection makes abundantly clear that Houston has not grown as a writer and has no interest in taking on more difficult and varied material.
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Summary: Keeps you just as engrossed as "Cowboys Are My Weakness."
Review: Pam Houston has a real talent for writing about the search a woman goes through to find herself and love. Her writing often stops me cold in my tracks, smiling and shaking my head simultaneously. I enjoyed "Cowboys" slightly better because "Waltzing" has too much nature writing for my taste. I prefer Ms. Houston writing about relationships rather than rafting or birds. Nonetheless I loved spending time with Lucy and all of her friends and was sad to see her stories end.
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Summary: Best book I've read this year.
Review: Pam Houston has written an insightful, spiritual novel which seems to speak directly to the reader. I laughed out loud and sympathized with Lucy. I also admired her sense of adventure. A thoroughly excellent recommendation.
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Summary: My favorite writer
Review: Pam Houston is the only living writer I would love to take a course from. Let me know where she teaches next. Her writing has the quality that lasts, the element found in Jane Austen and Mark Twain: humor about the pathos of personal relationships. These stories will impress unless you are an Amazon explorer, a sailor, a wildlife hunting guide, a seasoned white water rafter, a mountain expert, AND a prize-winning author. I don't know Pam Houston but I'd like to. Linda Donelson, author of "Out of Isak Dinesen: Karen Blixen's untold story"
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Summary: Woven Stories
Review: Pam Houston once again has spun a web of collected stories encircling the life of of our heroine; this time, it's Lucy, photographer, hunter of the perfect emotionally available man, realistic woman-with-issues that we can all identify with. Filled with rich metaphors and descriptive detail, this collection of related stories is fun to read and leaves the reader emotionally satisfied when he or she comes full circle by the end of the book. I highly recommend this book as great summer reading! Enjoy.
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Summary: Highly recommended, well-written, fine prose...
Review: Pam Houston writes in a mature voice that speaks of strong self-awareness and confidence in expression. Another review I read compared her writing with Bridget Jones's Diary...I disagree. Houston's prose is more mature and flows effortlessly making her stories enlightening and simultaneously entertaining and poignant. I'm so pleased to have found this book!
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Summary: a book I wish I had written
Review: Pam Houston writes in that imperfect way that achieves near perfection. You know an author is getting to you when the words make you stop and read them again, tasting and feeling them to make sure they are real. Her passage explaining why she stays with a jealous, abusive man rang almost too close to home....after giving her litany of painful reasons, she explains that you should understand where she is coming from... "unless you are lucky, and then you will not." Reading Pam makes me feel as though an old friend is sitting in my bedroom talking to ME, and I realized reading this passage, that I did, unfortunately, understand. Thanks for writing from the heart, and I can't wait to read more!
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