Richard Noggle's Reviews > Bad Kansas: Stories

Mandelbaum's stories, as the title suggests, are clearly intended to provide a deep sense of place, and often her Kansas details are spot-on: "...the Kansas sun was poised like the face of a hammer ready to strike." For anyone who knows Lawrence, the stories which are set in this town capture both the peculiar pull of the place and the difficulty of escape. In subject matter, however, the numerous relationship stories tend to blur together after awhile, and I kept wanting her to drift a bit further into the weirder territory that some of the stories flirt with but never fully embrace.