Stylized sketches rather than fully realized fiction.
De Rosnay’s stories demonstrate 11 ways to deceive and/or leave your lover.
In this prolific French novelist’s first short story collection, infidelity is a given, particularly for the male of the species. Retribution, however, is women’s work. Technology is the petard by which many straying spouses are hoisted: in “The Texts,” a wife opts for feigned ignorance of her husband’s escapades—if only she can resist the temptation to hack his cellphone. In “The ‘Baby Phone,’ ” a baby monitor permits a hitherto trusting wife to overhear hanky-panky, and in “The Answering Machine,” an unerased message is the harbinger of betrayal. Many of the stories have O. Henry–esque twist endings that American readers may find a bit old-fashioned. Among these is “Hotel Room,” wherein a man drops off a letter ending his passionate liaison moments before the no-tell hotel—and perhaps his mistress—is engulfed in flames. Similarly, in “The Red Notebook,” a cheating wife bemoans her husband’s staidness, which is a sure sign she’s in for a surprise. Readers seldom are, however: in “The Brunette from Rue Raynouard,” a suspected affair turns out to be sex therapy, and in the “USB Key,” a husband chooses an unusual medium to reveal that he's gay, with predictable results. The most promising stories seem to end just as interesting complications begin to arise. “The Password,” about a randy professor and a young American studying abroad, refers expressly to the difference between French and American attitudes toward sexual harassment but, sadly, ducks the opportunity to elaborate. (The American women all have names like Hunter, Holly, Taylor, etc., as if de Rosnay has been cribbing from The Preppy Handbook.) In most cases the revenge meted out by the women is not particularly inventive, whether it involves fisticuffs, (“The Au Pair Girl”), sharp objects (“The ‘Baby Phone’ ”), a dignified exit (“The Woods”), or a Raymond Carver–worthy apartment trashing (“The Strand of Hair”).
Stylized sketches rather than fully realized fiction.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-06880-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
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
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