Unkempt : Stories

Rating:
Summary: Unfinished
Review: I am a huge fan of short stories, but in my opinion Ms. Eldridge falls short of the mark. In fact, her stories don't even come close to fulfilling the criteria you expect from a short story. At first, she seems to be mocking her own inability to write a story. As I read through the second and third story in this collection, it became more and more apparent that this was not a gimmick -- she really can't write! Rambling does not equal writing. There are so many wonderful collections of short stories out there I would not spend time on the unsatisfying jumble of Eldridge's "Unkempt."

Rating:
Summary: Consciousness made unsimple
Review: It's easy to coast along and admire the breadth of vernacular on display in Unkempt and forget that there is one virtuostic voice at work, and she hears EVERYTHING -- every fragment of consciousness, every syllable of contemporary anguish, every exhalation. There are a lot of writerly fragments and run-ons running amok out there, but these are the most perfectly flawed sentences I've seen in many years. Eldridge has an incredible perception of what's going on in the minds of apparently everyone who walks down her street, and a rhythmic sensibility for making it understood. While all of these stories at first appear to be messy tangents, they serve as well-scrubbed mirrors.

Rating:
Summary: How could this possibly be her first book?
Review: This book is just terrific. (Five words, Courtney.) I can't say enough what a really amazing collection this is. The writing is smart and absorbing. These stories do more than provoke sympathy. They provoke empathy. Each story made me feel as though I'd just spent a while roaming around inside someone else's head. I'm going to make everyone I know read this--all the cool people anyway.


Rating:
Summary: my best short story find since lorrie moore
Review: This is a terrific read, funny and tragic and powerful. It's a little edgy like Lorrie Moore, but much more intimate, more personal. You're really inside the characters' thoughts, which are mostly going at warp speed. The tone is urban and energetic, not to mention pretty neurotic most of the time. These are characters with Issues, and usually they're quite aware of them. One woman is deathly afraid of sharks in swimming pools -- she knows there are not sharks in swimming pools, but she's constructed a very elaborate rationale for her fears. But the anxieties and neuroses are cut with great personal warmth and intimacy, not to mention great humor. Even the title story, which develops from a rather breezy look at a woman estranged from her daughter to a very intense and direct portrait of What
Went Wrong, even this story has some laugh-out-loud material. It ends on a nicely optimistic note, too. The Former World Record Holder of the last story, whose record was as pornographic as records get, she settles down and discovers her Inner Wife and Bowler. And it's beautifully plausible, beautifully real, like all these stories.