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Someday This Will Be Funny
The stories in Some Day This Will Be Funny marry memory to moment in a union of narrative form as immaculate and imperfect as the characters damned to act them out on page. Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, presides over the ceremony; Clarence Thomas, Marvin Gaye, and Madame Realism mingle at the reception. Narrators – by turn infamous and nameless – shift within their own skin, struggling to unknot reminiscence from reality while scenes rush into warm focus, then cool, twist, and snap in the breeze of shifting thought. Epistle, quotation, and haiku bounce between lyrical passages of lucid beauty, echoing the scattered, cycling arpeggio of Tillman’s preferred subject: the unsettled mind. Collectively, these stories own a conscience shaped by oaths made and broken; by the skeleton silence and secrets of family; by love’s shifting chartreuse. They traffic in the quiet images of personal history, each one a flickering sacrament in danger of being swallowed up by the lust and desperation of their possessor: a fistful of parking tickets shoved in the glove compartment, a little black book hidden from a wife in a safe-deposit box, a planter stuffed with flowers to keep out the cooing mourning doves. They are stories fashioned with candor and animated by fits of wordplay and invention – stories that affirm Tillman’s unshakable talent for wedding the patterns and rituals of thought with the blushing immediacy of existence, defying genre and defining experimental short fiction.
160 pages, Paperback
First published April 20, 2011
About the author
Lynne Tillman
113 books320 followersHere’s an Author’s Bio. It could be written differently. I’ve written many for myself and read lots of other people’s. None is right or sufficient, each slants one way or the other. So, a kind of fiction – selection of events and facts.. So let me just say: I wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old. That I actually do write stories and novels and essays, and that they get published, still astonishes me.
My news is that my 6th novel MEN AND APPARITIONS will appear in march 2018 from Soft Skull Press. It's my first novel in 12 years.
Each spring, I teach writing at University at Albany, in the English Dept., and in the fall, at The New School, in the Writing Dept.
I’ve lived with David Hofstra, a bass player, for many years. It makes a lot of sense to me that I live with a bass player, since time and rhythm are extremely important to my writing. He’s also a wonderful man.
As time goes by, my thoughts about writing change, how to write THIS, or why I do. There are no stable answers to a process that changes, and a life that does too. Writing, when I’m inhabiting its world, makes me happy, or less unhappy. I also feel engaged in and caught up in politics here, and in worlds farther away.
When I work inside the world in which I do make choices, I'm completely absorbed in what happens, in what can emerge. Writing is a beautiful, difficult relationship with what you know and don’t know, have or haven’t experienced, with grammar and syntax, with words, primarily, with ideas, and with everything else that’s been written.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
August 26, 2013
When you look back on an old relationship, I wonder, do you actually miss the person or do you simply miss the person you were when you were with them? Do you get misty-eyed looking at old pictures, trying your damnedest to recall every sweet word ever whispered to you or do you get sidetracked by all the words you said and all the ones they didn't? Then again, maybe you're one of the lucky ones who's simply too busy rewriting history and making traitors into saviors.
Either way, more often than not, your walk down that old, worn-out path happens when you least expect it. Poets and dreamers would have you believe it's only when you're bathed in moonlight and wrapped in stars that heartache and longing creeps up on you. It's not true, you know. That's what makes it so uncomfortable, so surprising. If it only happened between midnight and first light...well, who in their right mind would ever work a third shift? No, it's while you're standing in the check out line, talking with your boss, walking through the grass on you way to someplace better that long-forgotten ghosts begin walking circles around you. It's in this abyss, this rabbit hole, that Tillman explores. And it's in this suspension that her siren's song calls to you, whispering words at first sweet and alluring only to turn brutal, creating self doubt and emptiness. In other words, I think she's a mad genius and I want her to be my best friend.
Either way, more often than not, your walk down that old, worn-out path happens when you least expect it. Poets and dreamers would have you believe it's only when you're bathed in moonlight and wrapped in stars that heartache and longing creeps up on you. It's not true, you know. That's what makes it so uncomfortable, so surprising. If it only happened between midnight and first light...well, who in their right mind would ever work a third shift? No, it's while you're standing in the check out line, talking with your boss, walking through the grass on you way to someplace better that long-forgotten ghosts begin walking circles around you. It's in this abyss, this rabbit hole, that Tillman explores. And it's in this suspension that her siren's song calls to you, whispering words at first sweet and alluring only to turn brutal, creating self doubt and emptiness. In other words, I think she's a mad genius and I want her to be my best friend.
February 5, 2014
This is one one of those to own for repeated consultations, to savor the prose, the use of pauses, and for its quotables. Favorite vignettes probably are the first, 'That's How Wrong My Love Is' for its charm, 'But There's A Family Resemblance,' 'The Original Impulse,' 'The Recipe,' Love Sentence,' Madame Realism's Conscience,' and the last, 'Save Me From the Pious and the Vengeful.'
April 22, 2015
clever stuff and I liked about half of it a lot, but the other half didn't engage as much. Felt sometimes I was being wrestled to the ground.. Proper review coming...
..half or so are meditations on themes, words, feelings, rather than straightforward stories, and some did not grab me. Eg. ‘Love sentence’ mulls over the words ‘I love you’ and contains quotes from Shakespeare and Kafka to the Troggs ('wild thing you make my heart sing') and Richard Hell; ‘Lunacies’ mixes moon facts with ideas on parasites, identical twins, and lovers. Another imagines a meeting between Marvin Gaye and John Lennon at the Dakota building, which could have been a lulu, but they take coke and smoke weed (as they would) and just kick their song titles back and forth. Of course that’s probably how it would be. Another plays with the colour of Chartreuse, and how it sums up a couple’s mutual life. However others did grab, or at least amuse - the woman who collects parking tickets and simply moves to another state to avoid payment. The woman contemplating her sex drive (She’d already had sex with many men, but those were the ones who were easy to have sex with or to find for sex.. she could meet them at parties or in clubs, even in grocery stores, especially near the beer, wine and cheese displays). I enjoyed the absurdist ‘The Way We Are’ which starts on a boring Thursday afternoon in Amsterdam and takes in a drunken visit to the cinema and her friend kicking a car (in sandals) and getting into an altercation with the local police (I was leading the life of a bat, a fascinated bat, in a dark hole, eating candy and gobbling images.) Mostly I preferred the ones that were more ‘story-like’, ie had more resonance and maybe more ‘plot’: ‘Playing Hurt’, and the lovely ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’ amongst others. There was beauty there.
..half or so are meditations on themes, words, feelings, rather than straightforward stories, and some did not grab me. Eg. ‘Love sentence’ mulls over the words ‘I love you’ and contains quotes from Shakespeare and Kafka to the Troggs ('wild thing you make my heart sing') and Richard Hell; ‘Lunacies’ mixes moon facts with ideas on parasites, identical twins, and lovers. Another imagines a meeting between Marvin Gaye and John Lennon at the Dakota building, which could have been a lulu, but they take coke and smoke weed (as they would) and just kick their song titles back and forth. Of course that’s probably how it would be. Another plays with the colour of Chartreuse, and how it sums up a couple’s mutual life. However others did grab, or at least amuse - the woman who collects parking tickets and simply moves to another state to avoid payment. The woman contemplating her sex drive (She’d already had sex with many men, but those were the ones who were easy to have sex with or to find for sex.. she could meet them at parties or in clubs, even in grocery stores, especially near the beer, wine and cheese displays). I enjoyed the absurdist ‘The Way We Are’ which starts on a boring Thursday afternoon in Amsterdam and takes in a drunken visit to the cinema and her friend kicking a car (in sandals) and getting into an altercation with the local police (I was leading the life of a bat, a fascinated bat, in a dark hole, eating candy and gobbling images.) Mostly I preferred the ones that were more ‘story-like’, ie had more resonance and maybe more ‘plot’: ‘Playing Hurt’, and the lovely ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’ amongst others. There was beauty there.
November 9, 2011
My stepfather checked a copy of this out from our local library and sort of asked me to take a look at it before he did, because I apparently have a good taste in literature. I found the essays/short stories to be a little evocative, semi thought-provoking, and well written, if a little hard to follow.
I hated it.
I'm the type of person who never leaves a book unfinished (I saw Twilight through to the end, and that was some serious tripe) but I seriously could not get past the third piece. Perhaps it's because I'm an extroverted, vegetarian, feminist tree-hugger, but Tillman's writing seems to me to show all that is wrong with the female sex. Her stories center on anthropormorphization, the need to feel wanted, lost chances, and sexual power through superiority. Her characters, while well thought out, seem to be extremely one-dimensional.
All in all, I may try picking this up again in a while, but probably not.
I hated it.
I'm the type of person who never leaves a book unfinished (I saw Twilight through to the end, and that was some serious tripe) but I seriously could not get past the third piece. Perhaps it's because I'm an extroverted, vegetarian, feminist tree-hugger, but Tillman's writing seems to me to show all that is wrong with the female sex. Her stories center on anthropormorphization, the need to feel wanted, lost chances, and sexual power through superiority. Her characters, while well thought out, seem to be extremely one-dimensional.
All in all, I may try picking this up again in a while, but probably not.
November 9, 2011
red lemonade saves the day.
fantastic short stories, i guess collected from over the decades. i am hereby officially a fan of lynne tillman. i have a line of a book about Shore she is involved with, but i don't know in what capacity, intro perhaps?
and a novel of her's, about paranoia (that;s all i need, hey!..what are you looking at?!)
No Lease on Life
her stories are varied in tone and topic, and remind me of old fashioned styles Lawrence, Hardy, even Trollope, but also new old fashioned styles like Homes, Lorrie Moore, Beckett, David Leavitt, sandra Cisneros....
fantastic short stories, i guess collected from over the decades. i am hereby officially a fan of lynne tillman. i have a line of a book about Shore she is involved with, but i don't know in what capacity, intro perhaps?
and a novel of her's, about paranoia (that;s all i need, hey!..what are you looking at?!)
No Lease on Life
her stories are varied in tone and topic, and remind me of old fashioned styles Lawrence, Hardy, even Trollope, but also new old fashioned styles like Homes, Lorrie Moore, Beckett, David Leavitt, sandra Cisneros....
December 22, 2017
Surprisingly fantastic. The late latter part went off on a post-modernistic deep end, but most of the stories are really really good. How haven't I heard of Lynne Tillman before this?
December 27, 2011
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainme...
“Someday This Will Be Funny,” by Lynne Tillman, is being published by an imprint that plans to produce books simultaneously in paperback, as digital downloads and as “a limited edition artisanal object direct from the publisher.” Appropriately, the author here offers multiple definitions of what a “story” is.v
By JENNY SHANK
Special Contributor
The Dallas Morning News
SHORT STORIES
Someday This Will Be Funny
Lynne Tillman
(Red Lemonade, $14.95)
Books have existed for several hundred years as a printed delivery system for stories and ideas but are currently available in many paperless formats: Kindle eBooks and Nook Books and Apple iBooks, to name a few. Someday This Will Be Funny by Lynne Tillman is the first book published by a new independent imprint, Red Lemonade, which according to a press release will produce its books simultaneously “in trade paperback, as digital downloads in all formats and channels, and as a limited edition artisanal object direct from the publisher.”
Tillman's stories in her 11th book seem well suited these free-wheeling times in book delivery, because just as publishers now offer multiple ways to experience books, Tillman offers the reader multiple ways to experience what a “story” is.
Some of the stories in this smart, often funny, mostly Manhattan-focused collection read like interesting anecdotes just as a friend would tell them, such as “That's How Wrong My Love Is,” in which the narrator describes the unusual behavior of a pair of mourning doves nesting in a window planter in a city building, or “A Simple Idea,” about a woman who chronically collects parking tickets until she bribes someone to let her park in a secured lot, or “A Greek Story,” about a small triumph over a badgering customs official.
Other stories follow the drifting logic of a daydream or the patter of internal thoughts. Tillman has a knack for capturing the way one's private thoughts unfold, as in “The Unconscious is Also Ridiculous,” which describes a young woman of great athletic ability who becomes “a tennis player, a great champion in her prime,” due to her parents' diligence in seeking coaches for her and organizing their lives to revolve around her tennis. Then you turn the page and learn this is a “fantasy” — the woman is still fond of tennis, but never progressed in the sport. “She maintains the belief that, if her parents had recognized her gift and gotten her a great coach, she could have won the Open, and maybe a Grand Slam.”
In another story in this vein, “More Sex,” Tillman ruminates about sex in a frank and funny way. The protagonist worries her fantasies are inadequate because she lacks imagination, and tries to force herself to think about sex every seven minutes, as she's read that men do. “Every seven minutes was hard, she didn't know how men did it, because she didn't have that kind of imagination, and also she didn't know for how long men thought about sex every seven minutes. And what did they think up?”
Tillman's stories can take the form of letters (“Dear Ollie,”) or be composed of a scrapbook of philosophical musings on one subject, such as the moon (“Lunacies”), or a color (“Chartreuse”). One of the most successful of the latter type is “Love Sentence,” a compilation of sentences that have to do with love — quotes from Kafka, Shakespeare, and Edith Wharton, interspersed with the thoughts of a character named Paige, who is in love, and some of her letters to her “Dearest.” along with bits of historical information. Although it follows an unusual format for a love story, “Love Sentence” is a moving evocation of the intense, flitting feelings that infatuation brings.
Over the past three decades, Lynne Tillman has earned a reputation for experimentation in fiction over the past three decades, and in “Someday This Will Be Funny” she creates a new form to follow the function of each of her stories.
Jenny Shank's first novel, “The Ringer,” was published this spring. She is the Books & Writers Editor of NewWest.Net/Books.
“Someday This Will Be Funny,” by Lynne Tillman, is being published by an imprint that plans to produce books simultaneously in paperback, as digital downloads and as “a limited edition artisanal object direct from the publisher.” Appropriately, the author here offers multiple definitions of what a “story” is.v
By JENNY SHANK
Special Contributor
The Dallas Morning News
SHORT STORIES
Someday This Will Be Funny
Lynne Tillman
(Red Lemonade, $14.95)
Books have existed for several hundred years as a printed delivery system for stories and ideas but are currently available in many paperless formats: Kindle eBooks and Nook Books and Apple iBooks, to name a few. Someday This Will Be Funny by Lynne Tillman is the first book published by a new independent imprint, Red Lemonade, which according to a press release will produce its books simultaneously “in trade paperback, as digital downloads in all formats and channels, and as a limited edition artisanal object direct from the publisher.”
Tillman's stories in her 11th book seem well suited these free-wheeling times in book delivery, because just as publishers now offer multiple ways to experience books, Tillman offers the reader multiple ways to experience what a “story” is.
Some of the stories in this smart, often funny, mostly Manhattan-focused collection read like interesting anecdotes just as a friend would tell them, such as “That's How Wrong My Love Is,” in which the narrator describes the unusual behavior of a pair of mourning doves nesting in a window planter in a city building, or “A Simple Idea,” about a woman who chronically collects parking tickets until she bribes someone to let her park in a secured lot, or “A Greek Story,” about a small triumph over a badgering customs official.
Other stories follow the drifting logic of a daydream or the patter of internal thoughts. Tillman has a knack for capturing the way one's private thoughts unfold, as in “The Unconscious is Also Ridiculous,” which describes a young woman of great athletic ability who becomes “a tennis player, a great champion in her prime,” due to her parents' diligence in seeking coaches for her and organizing their lives to revolve around her tennis. Then you turn the page and learn this is a “fantasy” — the woman is still fond of tennis, but never progressed in the sport. “She maintains the belief that, if her parents had recognized her gift and gotten her a great coach, she could have won the Open, and maybe a Grand Slam.”
In another story in this vein, “More Sex,” Tillman ruminates about sex in a frank and funny way. The protagonist worries her fantasies are inadequate because she lacks imagination, and tries to force herself to think about sex every seven minutes, as she's read that men do. “Every seven minutes was hard, she didn't know how men did it, because she didn't have that kind of imagination, and also she didn't know for how long men thought about sex every seven minutes. And what did they think up?”
Tillman's stories can take the form of letters (“Dear Ollie,”) or be composed of a scrapbook of philosophical musings on one subject, such as the moon (“Lunacies”), or a color (“Chartreuse”). One of the most successful of the latter type is “Love Sentence,” a compilation of sentences that have to do with love — quotes from Kafka, Shakespeare, and Edith Wharton, interspersed with the thoughts of a character named Paige, who is in love, and some of her letters to her “Dearest.” along with bits of historical information. Although it follows an unusual format for a love story, “Love Sentence” is a moving evocation of the intense, flitting feelings that infatuation brings.
Over the past three decades, Lynne Tillman has earned a reputation for experimentation in fiction over the past three decades, and in “Someday This Will Be Funny” she creates a new form to follow the function of each of her stories.
Jenny Shank's first novel, “The Ringer,” was published this spring. She is the Books & Writers Editor of NewWest.Net/Books.
December 22, 2022
Exceptional stories that traverse an impressive variety of landscapes: emotional, political, humourous, fantastical. Lynne Tillman is the writer who writers fall in love with, a master of supportive provocation. Her humility and honesty make her an ideal, the practitioner who inspires others to do, be, and write better.
May 30, 2011
This set of short stories or vignettes started sharply, reminiscent of Lydia Davis, but petered out mid-way through. Thought provoking and evocative, but lacking in tangible imagery or plot development to ground the reader.
July 7, 2011
Someone help clean up my own vomit. This was horrible.
July 27, 2011
Did not care for this collection of short stories AT ALL!
November 3, 2011
One of the few short story collections where I didn't get ANY of the stories.
September 22, 2020
Someday This Will Be Funny is an anthology of short stories written by Lynne Tillman. Tillman's gorgeous and potent latest finds the innovative author embracing diverse, imaginative forms in these often brief but always intriguing tales.
For the most part, this collection of short stories gave an overall mediocre impression. Someday This Will Be Funny is a decent, albeit mediocre collection of twenty-one short stories. With subjects ranging from birds to Marvin Gaye to an ex-lover who has earned Tillman's wrath, these missives partake in an elegant, efficient use of language to challenge concepts of love, history, memory, and language.
Like most anthologies there are weaker contributions and Someday This Will Be Funny is not an exception. Roughly half of the short stories are written rather well with a few outstanding pieces and there are just a few that needed more space to be flushed out more.
All in all, Someday This Will Be Funny is a decent collection of short stories that hopefully would be humorous someday.
For the most part, this collection of short stories gave an overall mediocre impression. Someday This Will Be Funny is a decent, albeit mediocre collection of twenty-one short stories. With subjects ranging from birds to Marvin Gaye to an ex-lover who has earned Tillman's wrath, these missives partake in an elegant, efficient use of language to challenge concepts of love, history, memory, and language.
Like most anthologies there are weaker contributions and Someday This Will Be Funny is not an exception. Roughly half of the short stories are written rather well with a few outstanding pieces and there are just a few that needed more space to be flushed out more.
All in all, Someday This Will Be Funny is a decent collection of short stories that hopefully would be humorous someday.
June 7, 2023
some of it my cup of tea some of it is not some of it i just sort of glanced over but i am interested in reading more lynne tillman. the writing is good and it can only go up from here.
3.5 but not feeling generous.
3.5 but not feeling generous.
August 24, 2017
Disappointing. I loved the first story with the birds on the sill, but afterwards everything devolved into navel gazing, a lot of tell with no show.
July 7, 2012
I had the pleasure of reviewing an earlier book of Tillman's stories, her collaborative with visual artists _This is Not It_ a while back, and so I feel like I know Tillman's work at least a little, and this is another book by her:)
In other words, this is a book made up of stories that have plots, but which are also interested in language, mostly set in NYC and amongst the kinds of people who shop at bodegas but are also concerned, post-Beckett, about the ability and the need to say things: how do you resolve concerns about representation, but also find a date, decide where to sit in a movie, things like that. I sort of cast around for someone who kind of meshes that intellectual inquiry with the quotidian nature of life and decided for myself that Tillman is kind of like Frank O'Hara, if he wrote stories. I don't know, maybe that won't work for you, and you'll find the whole comparison thing kind of silly or unnecessary, but for me, it helped me to think a bit more about this book.
For example, it helps me to decide that I generally like the shorter stories more-- there's one here, "More Sex," that's pretty short, essentially a mini-rant or a kind of focused off-on-a-tangent moment that might be my favorite thing in the book, though also one that really isn't representative of her more usual double-vision, where she's seeing and then seeing herself seeing, representing and thinking about representation. And then there are a couple longer stories here-- longer than anything I remember from _This is Not It_, and for me, Tillman isn't as successful in the longer stories.... a kind of weariness sets in, especially because the endings of nearly all the stories feels incidental instead of shaped or polished, and you begin to wonder as a reader-- or I do at least-- why not just stop it here, since it won't end neatly anyhow. The longest story in the book, Love Sentence, I cheated and just skipped to the end, and felt bad but did it anyway.
So, in short, I like these stories-- the subject matter is fun and makes you feel hip and all downtown-art-scene-like. And I think the work is important: Tillman really is as aware as you can be about what she's putting on the page, and it's challenging enough, despite the relative familiarity of her subject matter, that you don't doze off or slide into some easy identification with the characters she writes about. It's good work, it's a good book of stories. Maybe because it's not my first time reading her work, it didn't hit me as hard as it did the first time I read her doing similar things.
In other words, this is a book made up of stories that have plots, but which are also interested in language, mostly set in NYC and amongst the kinds of people who shop at bodegas but are also concerned, post-Beckett, about the ability and the need to say things: how do you resolve concerns about representation, but also find a date, decide where to sit in a movie, things like that. I sort of cast around for someone who kind of meshes that intellectual inquiry with the quotidian nature of life and decided for myself that Tillman is kind of like Frank O'Hara, if he wrote stories. I don't know, maybe that won't work for you, and you'll find the whole comparison thing kind of silly or unnecessary, but for me, it helped me to think a bit more about this book.
For example, it helps me to decide that I generally like the shorter stories more-- there's one here, "More Sex," that's pretty short, essentially a mini-rant or a kind of focused off-on-a-tangent moment that might be my favorite thing in the book, though also one that really isn't representative of her more usual double-vision, where she's seeing and then seeing herself seeing, representing and thinking about representation. And then there are a couple longer stories here-- longer than anything I remember from _This is Not It_, and for me, Tillman isn't as successful in the longer stories.... a kind of weariness sets in, especially because the endings of nearly all the stories feels incidental instead of shaped or polished, and you begin to wonder as a reader-- or I do at least-- why not just stop it here, since it won't end neatly anyhow. The longest story in the book, Love Sentence, I cheated and just skipped to the end, and felt bad but did it anyway.
So, in short, I like these stories-- the subject matter is fun and makes you feel hip and all downtown-art-scene-like. And I think the work is important: Tillman really is as aware as you can be about what she's putting on the page, and it's challenging enough, despite the relative familiarity of her subject matter, that you don't doze off or slide into some easy identification with the characters she writes about. It's good work, it's a good book of stories. Maybe because it's not my first time reading her work, it didn't hit me as hard as it did the first time I read her doing similar things.
October 28, 2011
Tillman is one of our present literary-... well "genius" falls flat, more precisely she is a literarian immersed in our moment in time, and serves us well as cultural beacon.
Someday it will be funny when they look back at how amused and content we were with late seventies and eighties sitcoms and soap operas, that were backlashed with reality tv shows.
Her writing is at times melancholy and/or hyper, it is paced or sporadic. Irony, wit, sarcasm, revealing. Exposed, naked, cloaked. Dryly or feverish. Irritating, and implicating;
"Put that mirror down young lady, you'll see your own ghost!"
***Note: Birdseed bated Morning Doves provide hours of fun for fat kitties who are fat because they are bored.
Someday it will be funny when they look back at how amused and content we were with late seventies and eighties sitcoms and soap operas, that were backlashed with reality tv shows.
Her writing is at times melancholy and/or hyper, it is paced or sporadic. Irony, wit, sarcasm, revealing. Exposed, naked, cloaked. Dryly or feverish. Irritating, and implicating;
"Put that mirror down young lady, you'll see your own ghost!"
***Note: Birdseed bated Morning Doves provide hours of fun for fat kitties who are fat because they are bored.
March 6, 2012
This is a collection of short stories from Lynn Tillman. Some were great, other were not so great. Actually, far more were less-than-stellar, hence the two-star rating. Unfortunately, none of them were moving enough -- there was not a single story that I loved! Some that I really like and just liked, but not one did I love. I think it's because, at times, it feels like the author is trying too hard to write these surreal and weird stories. They're too strange and too out there, and they end up not making much sense, or not evoking any kind of emotion or feeling. Who are these people in the stories? What are they going through? What's their struggle? How can I relate to them?
I guess that it's just not my cup of tea.
I guess that it's just not my cup of tea.
July 30, 2011
Lynne Tillman places together a variety of stories about loss and heartache, grouping them under a title encouraging laughter in the face of sadness. The collection is a mixed bag of good, bad, and indifferent. One tale laments the disappearance of a dove's nest outside her window, another shares a final tale of freindship before it fall apart. Marvin Gaye attempts a collaboration with John Lennon, and the author herself offers a poignant letter to an old flame. Overall, not quite my cup of tea - but a nice read nonetheless.
September 1, 2011
It's beautifully written, but I really just didn't get it. Kinda made me feel like a dork who just couldn't understand what it took to be in the cool kids club, a club filled with people who loved this book.
September 9, 2012
I don't think this will be funny someday. On the bright side I created a shelf just for it. This will go down in history as one of the very few books I did not finish and I am a sucker for finishing books I start reading. Oh well... maybe someday I might pick it up and finish it - or not.
March 2, 2013
This book was just awful. It was shockingly empty, and didn't have a point. The author is extremely talented, and the writing was top notch, but there was absolutely no creativity in this book. It read like a science journal not like fiction/creative writing.
Shelved as 'unconquered'
May 22, 2016I was almost done, but just. couldn't. finish. it. Felt more like an endurance test than anything I was enjoying. They say she's a writer's writer, and now I believe it. Changing shelf from "currently-reading" to "unconquerables."
January 9, 2012
Good not great collection of short stories. Highlights: "The Shadow of a Doubt" and "Later."
May 11, 2011
Lynne Tillman's writing is like an abacus. A pair of scales moving up and down. The heart of this book is Love Sentence.
July 21, 2011
Not my cup of tea. Read two stories and then opted out.
December 8, 2011
This book couldn't end soon enough - miserable waste of my time.
Want to read
July 2, 2011added after reading the Vanity Fair review in the June 2011 issue on my iPad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/boo...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/boo...
July 20, 2011
It probably deserves more stars, but I really don't like books of short stories
September 26, 2011
2011 Book 99/100
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews