Final Vinyl Days and Other Stories

Rating:
Summary: You know these folks!
Review: Every once in a while I find a short story collection that totally entrances me--this is one of them. I read one story a day for about a week, so as to be able to spread out my pleasure.

McCorkle has such a wonderful and clever way with words, and has great insight into the human condition. I felt as if I knew these people she was writing about!

I especially liked "Your Husband Is Cheating On Us", a very clever monlogue. The mistress's humor is so natural and honest.

I think short stories are very difficult to write as the author has to accomplish so much with so few words. McCorkle is able to do this with seeming effortlessness.

Rating:
Summary: Oddly seductive, sometimes shocking, always memorable
Review: First time reading Ms. McCorkle, but it won't be the last. Enjoyed a story or two at a sitting and found that I wanted to slow down and re-read as I passed oh so quickly through this neat collection of startling vignettes. Each portrait drawn was of a memorable character or two and they were not always (gasp)lovable. Then I had to go back to the beginning and revisit each story. Give me more, I really enjoyed these stories, especially the woman with the new career in funerals! My single complaint is that the collection is too brief, yet that is what piqued my initial interest (a handful of a book-let!)

Rating:
Summary: she's not as original, nor as funny as before
Review: I love short stories, and I really enjoyed Jill McCorkle's "Crash Diet", as well as her first novel "The Cheerleader". But "Final Vinyl Days", a collection of stories mostly about unhappy/problematic people who either rationalize or realize that their life isn't so bad (that seems to be the universal plot), doesn't live up to those two other books. Her characters don't have the energy her older characters used to have. And several of them tend to reminisce about their past too much -- it's one digression after another and the stories slowly move. There isn't enough variation among the characters/stories either, they all seem to be written in very similar tones/moods/personalities. This isn't one of her works that I would recommend buying.

However, one of her best stories (in my opinion) is in this book, "Life Prerecorded". It is realistic, doesn't depend on weird circumstances to make a plot, and is full of insight (also appears in "Writer's Harvest2" which is a better buy, I think). A good interview with McCorkle also appears at the end of "Final Vinyl Days".