Anagrams

Rating:
Summary: Laughing At the Saddest Things
Review: "Anagrams" is simply one of those books you can not read in a quiet room with other people around you. You can't sit at the mini-wannabe-Starbucks at the bookstore and read through some of the passages, or bring this with you for jury duty during the interminable wait, or sit in the doctor's office with this instead of paging through six-month old tattered copies of People and Good Housekeeping. You can't. This book is too funny. It's too good. If you're not laughing, you're gasping, you're saying, "Oh my god, that's wonderful!" You're asking people around you for a highlighter, for a piece of paper and a pencil to write this stuff down. Maybe you will have a chance to use one of these quotes in your daily life.

Moore is the kind of writer I wish I discovered before I picked out my high school yearbook quote. Clearly I'd use the quote, "Life is like a journey. Sometimes the weather is good. Sometimes it's bad. Sometimes it's so bad your car goes off the road." I don't remember where that's from, probably some story in "Birds of America," a tome of brilliance in and of itself.

So, "Anagrams," yes. Beware when you begin. It's like Lorrie Moore is trying to throw you off. She is. You'll backtrack a million times. You'll say, "This makes no sense!" But it does. Just trust that it will.

There are four stories at the beginning. "Escape from the Invasion of the Love Killers," "Strings Too Short to Use," "Yard Sale" (so ohmygod funny I thought I'd wet my pants, I could barely look at it) and "Water." Then there's the book, under the title, "The Nun of That." All of the stories contain the characters of Benna, her neighbor-friend Gerard, and her good friend Eleanor (I love Eleanor). The book introduces us to Georgeanne, Benna's daughter, Darrel, her lover, and various other weird Moore characters with strange names like Maple and Verrie. There is no chronology, it seems, to these stories and the book. You realize at the end that there isn't supposed to be. (Or is there? Hmmm...)

Clearly "Anagrams" is one of those books that deserves a re-read. No bother, though, because it is simply hilarious, and there's always something on every page you want to experience again.

So, any plot description? Goodness, no, I don't want to even try to discern a plot description. Just read this. Read this if you're familiar with Moore's shorter works and wonder if she can handle longer fiction. (Oh, she can, she's wonderful at it. You will worry at points if she got stuck and decided to go on some digressions on life, love, sex, and death, but even if she did--even if that was the case--they're wonderful to read.) I don't know if I recommend this as a first. My introduction to Ms. Moore was "Like Life," namely "You're Ugly, Too." I think "Self-Help" is wonderful place to start. I've yet to read "Who'll Run the Frog Hospital?" I can't wait.

Perhaps the best way to recommend this book is to leave you with a few choice quotes.

"Eleanor is a good friend and has come to our yard sale this weekend with all the mangy items she failed to sell in her own sale last weekend....[She] has brought over junk: foam rubber curlers with hair stuck in them; a lavender lace teddy with a large, unsightly stain; two bags of fiberglass insulation; three seamed and greasy juice glasses, which came with free shrimp cocktail, and which Eleanor now wants to sell for seventy-five cents."

"To me the ocean, so loaded with seafood, is more like a loud and giant bouillabaisse."

[On Benna's birthday, celebrating with Georgeanne]: "In the kitchen we eat ice cream. I can't get it together to make a cake." (Perhaps my favorite quote from this whole book. I had to stop reading and take that in when I first read it.)

Anyway, that's just a sampling of lines I liked from this book. If anything, read "Yard Sale" and tell me you can't resist this book. "Yard Sale" is perhaps some of the funniest writing Lorrie Moore has ever done. And this whole book is a compelling, can't-even-look-at-the-clock kind of read.

Rating:
Summary: Great ... but not Moore's best.
Review: Don't get me wrong, it's great, yeah. A quick and engrossing read stuffed with humor and Lorrie Moore's trademarked sardonic and somehow self-effacing wit(TM). Yet this is by no means her best book or even (I think) among her better material. I read it and very much enjoyed it, but I find weaknesses in her handling of her own style. And the ending, though clever and pretty ambitious, just doesn't do it for me (takes it too far out of the close-to-home we enjoy up to that point). I guess I would say that this was maybe a transitional work(?). I saw Moore read at Elliott Bay here in Seattle and she said the book resulted in part from publishers nagging for a novel (they sell better than collections I imagine). You can see how she cleverly handles the transition (being a writer of short stories up to that point) by writing a novel that, at the beginning, comes off a bit like a collection of related shorts. It ends up being an interesting way to write, but a bit schizophrenic. She works this trick more effectively some years later in "Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?" where a short story of a trip to Paris is woven through a longer narrative. In short, readers already gripped in the throes of Moore's prose shouldn't hesitate to read this -- its good! But those looking to try her work for the first time would do well to hit "Frog Hospital" (an awesome starting place I think) or one of her too-fab collections of short stories.

Rating:
Summary: Great Storytelling
Review: I laughed out loud numerous times, little suspecting that I would put the book down upon completion and sob for about twenty minutes. I've never had this intense a reaction to a book, with the possible exception of Catcher in the Rye. Lorrie Moore is not only clever and funny as hell; she also has a spectacular dark side. The reader is at first a bit confused -- is this a collection of short stories? If not, why is this character's back story different in this chapter? What the hell's going on here? By the last chapter, you think you've settled into an acceptable reality, only to have the rug pulled out from under you again. For readers who take a perverse pleasure in this kind of experience, I highly recommend "Anagrams".

Rating:
Summary: Hilariously gut-wrenching
Review: I laughed out loud numerous times, little suspecting that I would put the book down upon completion and sob for about twenty minutes. I've never had this intense a reaction to a book, with the possible exception of Catcher in the Rye. Lorrie Moore is not only clever and funny as hell; she also has a spectacular dark side. The reader is at first a bit confused -- is this a collection of short stories? If not, why is this character's back story different in this chapter? What the hell's going on here? By the last chapter, you think you've settled into an acceptable reality, only to have the rug pulled out from under you again. For readers who take a perverse pleasure in this kind of experience, I highly recommend "Anagrams".

Rating:
Summary: Contemplate Your Navel Much?
Review: I'm stunned that there are so many favorable reviews of Anagrams. I love wordplay and wit, and despite a few moderately amusing turns of phrase, this book doesn't cut it for me. Worse, corny "urban legends" are supposed to pass for cleverness, as with "Strings Too Short to Use." What is she going to write about next, the socks that get lost in the dryer? Ultimately, these characters are unattractive people who traipse along in a chronic low mood, holding out the no doubt false promise that if only there were SSRIs in the water supply, they might actually become active participants in life. Don't hold your breath!

Rating:
Summary: Contemplate Your Navel Much?
Review: I'm stunned that there are so many favorable reviews of Anagrams. I love wordplay and wit, and despite a few moderately amusing turns of phrase, this book doesn't cut it for me. Worse, corny "urban legends" are supposed to pass for cleverness, as with "Strings Too Short to Use." What is she going to write about next, the socks that get lost in the dryer? Ultimately, these characters are unattractive people who traipse along in a chronic low mood, holding out the no doubt false promise that if only there were SSRIs in the water supply, they might actually become active participants in life. Don't hold your breath!

Rating:
Summary: Moore is a master
Review: Like reviewer Chris Burkhalter, I don't think is Moore's best (Birds of America and Self Help are it, for me), but her second or third best surpasses so much other fiction out there it's not even funny. There is no one better at inventive descriptions of emotions, physical characteristics, smells, clothing, etc. It's miraculous really; her way with words boggles this aspiring writer's mind. And, as an aspiring writer, I have to say that it is Moore's writing I strive to emulate. I wasn't wild about the structure of Anagrams; as others have noted, three short story-esque pieces to start, followed by 'the novel.' But if you're a reader that reveres language, and if you often find yourself pausing to savor sentences and phrases in whatever it is you're reading, pick up this book (and anything else by Moore) and savor those moments, because I guarantee there will be many of them.

Rating:
Summary: King Pao Chicken
Review: Lorrie Moore is always a terrific read -- & just like Chinese food, I'm hungry an hour later for something of substance. Pretty turns of phrase lament what victims her protagonists are & Anagrams delivers to the 6th power, so much so that alternate story lines are called for, any as real as any other to our bewildered heroine who spends more time wondering how all her rather petty calamity happened rather than, maybe, DEALING WITH IT.

Yummy stuff but if you want to feel like individuals have some power to shape their lives, look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing
Review: There are a lot of people like Benna in the world-- I'm one of them-- always wondering "what if," and building my world over in my head, using old events and people in different ways. The first time I read Anagrams, I didn't really recognize these tendencies in myself, and I was so depressed, I couldn't pick it up again for a year. After I got over the ending, (no spoilers here, read it yourself!) I came back to the book and truly enjoyed it. I found out about Lorrie Moore at a poetry reading in college, which I went to on a whim, and I'm very, very glad I did.

Rating:
Summary: If you love language,
Review: you must read this book. And if you are also a woman, you will really sink your teeth into it. I was recently introduced to Lorrie Moore by reading "Who Will Run The Frog Hospital" and decided to venture into "Anagrams." It is a delicately crafted, ironic story. It took all my willpower not to pull out my yellow highlighter and mark up the pages, noting where I found my own life's experiences and desires mirrored in-between the printed lines of the text. The book is flawless. I know I will return to it over and over again as the years go by and as my own writing develops.