Definitely worth reading.
A slim debut collection of stories that deftly slip into the lives of everyday New Yorkers.
Before it became the green-grassed oasis that it is today—complete with a skating rink and afternoon piano music—Bryant Park was crime-infested, run-down, and frequented by the less palatable denizens of the city. In this collection’s first story, "Omeer’s Mangoes," an Iranian doorman whose building borders the park witnesses the beginnings of its gentrification firsthand: “They were planning on lowering the park to ground level. Astonishing. Impossible….'If it’s not at eye level,’ Angelo explained to him, 'the police can’t look in. It’s like a secret world where all sorts of things can happen. You don’t want to know.' " But in the majority of Moss’ stories, which are set post-renovation, Bryant Park remains precisely that: a private, nestled microcosm of the city in which the vividly mundane scenes of lives play out among the plane trees. In the gorgeously nuanced "Beautiful Mom," a college-age woman is reunited with her stunning mother near the park’s “aggressively plain” Gertrude Stein statue, throwing into sharp relief both the mother’s effervescence and the narrator’s thrumming longing for her ultimately out-of-reach love. "Dubonnet" features an elderly widow who, encased in paranoia and rigidity, spurns her son’s family that lives with her—until the Bach playing at the park releases untapped sorrow from her husband’s death, leading her to view her family and surroundings in a new light. Moss’ first-person portrayal of the crotchety woman, who wraps her porcelain figurines in cellophane whenever she journeys to the park and nurses an irrational dislike for her daughter-in-law—“I don’t even like to say her name (which is Cynthia)”—is both funny and tender, one of the collection’s strengths. "Dad Died," which embodies the collection’s preoccupation with parental death, is more a melancholy love letter than story; it overshadows "Next Time," a somewhat unfocused account of a woman who must settle her father’s estate that never develops its own voice and seems more a synthesis of thematic elements from earlier, more distinct stories. But overall, Moss’ ability to probe the rich, complicated depths of those the city views as ordinary—its doormen, library workers, waitresses, and bench-sitters—and capture the profound currents of emotion found in the everyday animates this collection and makes it uniquely illuminating.
Definitely worth reading.Pub Date: May 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-935248-91-0
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Leapfrog
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
