Extremely well-executed (so to speak), but it still seems more like a stunt than an artistically necessary stratagem.
Decapitated heads give us their final thoughts in 62 very short stories from Pulitzer Prize–winner Butler (Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, 1992, etc.).
The author’s previous collection, Had a Good Time (2004), also had an overarching premise, but inventing the life experiences behind postcard texts isn’t nearly as bizarre as his launching pad here. Two opening quotes inform us that a severed head retains consciousness for 90 seconds after it’s severed, and that “in a heightened state of emotion, we speak at the rate of 160 words per minute.” So each of these monologues, most by historical figures, contains 240 words, not a lot in which to capture the essence of someone’s existence. Still, the ever-ingenious Butler manages to create some haunting moments as he moves through time from a hunter beheaded by a saber-toothed tiger in 40,000 b.c. through his own imagined demise in 2008 (decapitated by an elevator door, it appears). A 19th-century French criminal seems to almost welcome the guillotine’s “ferocious embrace” in his frighteningly erotic musings. A Chinese wife crippled by foot-binding cries, “please, before my head, cut off my feet.” A baroness killed on Hitler’s orders nostalgically recalls the decadent pleasures of Weimar Germany and sees her executioner dressed in white tie and tails, just like the emcee in Cabaret. Several creepy entries are reminiscent of the style of murder Middle Eastern terrorists prefer for dispatching their hostages (mercifully, Daniel Pearl is not among them), and the thoughts of a Muslim woman beheaded by fatwa powerfully evoke her imprisonment behind the veil. But the primary emphasis here is existential rather than political; people remember the caress of a mother or a lover, the joys or traumas from which they have just been finally separated. Thematic unity is the only thing missing: The volume as a whole doesn’t cohere into anything more significant than the sum of its oddly beautiful parts.
Extremely well-executed (so to speak), but it still seems more like a stunt than an artistically necessary stratagem.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8118-5614-3
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
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
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