I liked Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner for its unusual setting in a remote part of Alaska and also the main character’s contemplation of his changing life. Another fiction book that I really liked was Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford for its interesting story of a Chinese American boy in Seattle during WWII.
In non-fiction The Assist by Neil Swidey really stuck with me – that means it must be good as I really do not like basketball. The author followed high school basketball players and their coach in Boston.
I also liked the delicately creepy short stories in The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa. A mystery author I first read this year was Stieg Larsson who wrote The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. His third and final book in the series is coming out in 2010. These mysteries are set in Sweden with a journalist and a computer hacker as the main characters – if you are squeamish they are not for you.
Happy reading in 2010!
Escape to Books
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa
The three stories in this book focus on young women in Japan in seemingly ordinary situations. Each character minutely observes the world around her. In “Dormitory” a young married woman helps her cousin find a place to live while he’s going to college. From the first paragraph of “Dormitory”:
“I became aware of the sound quite recently, though I can’t say with certainty when it started. There is a place in my memory that is dim and obscure, and the sound seems to have been hiding just there. At some point I suddenly realized that I was hearing it. It materialized out of nowhere, like the speckled pattern of microbes on the agar in a petri dish.”
I think the most intriguing of the three stories is “The Diving Pool.” At first it seems like a story about a girl with a crush on a diver. She spends her afternoons sitting in the bleachers watching him dive. He lives with her as her parents run an orphanage. Here she struggles with the transient nature of her life and her parents’ focus on others:
“Sometimes I have thought it might be better if I were an orphan, too. If I could have one of the tragic histories so common at the Light House – an alcoholic mother, a homicidal father, parents lost to death or abandonment, anything at all – then I would have been a proper orphan.”
Ogawa’s word choice seems extremely important and her translator must have done a very careful job to keep her voice. She sets up initially idyllic existences while slowly increasing the slightly creepy aspects. In “Pregnancy Diary” a younger sister keeps a record of how her sister’s pregnancy is proceeding, along with her subtle attempts to alter the outcome.
The Diving Pool is a quick read, but the stories will stick with you as they explore what human beings are capable of doing.
Escape to Books
“I became aware of the sound quite recently, though I can’t say with certainty when it started. There is a place in my memory that is dim and obscure, and the sound seems to have been hiding just there. At some point I suddenly realized that I was hearing it. It materialized out of nowhere, like the speckled pattern of microbes on the agar in a petri dish.”
I think the most intriguing of the three stories is “The Diving Pool.” At first it seems like a story about a girl with a crush on a diver. She spends her afternoons sitting in the bleachers watching him dive. He lives with her as her parents run an orphanage. Here she struggles with the transient nature of her life and her parents’ focus on others:
“Sometimes I have thought it might be better if I were an orphan, too. If I could have one of the tragic histories so common at the Light House – an alcoholic mother, a homicidal father, parents lost to death or abandonment, anything at all – then I would have been a proper orphan.”
Ogawa’s word choice seems extremely important and her translator must have done a very careful job to keep her voice. She sets up initially idyllic existences while slowly increasing the slightly creepy aspects. In “Pregnancy Diary” a younger sister keeps a record of how her sister’s pregnancy is proceeding, along with her subtle attempts to alter the outcome.
The Diving Pool is a quick read, but the stories will stick with you as they explore what human beings are capable of doing.
Escape to Books
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Unaccustomed Earth is a collection of short stories dealing mainly with second generation Indian Americans. The main characters in each story are well-defined and thoughtful young adults. There is drama including breakdowns, death, and alcoholism, but it is a very quiet and understated kind of drama. In many of the stories the family initially appears to be a model stereotypical Indian immigrant family with the fathers working in science-related careers and the mothers staying home to take care of the children. The children do well in school and attend well-known colleges, but it is when these children reach adulthood and make different choices from their parents that the stories resonate.
One of the stories that will stick with me is “Unaccustomed Earth.” It is told from the third person points of view of both Ruma, a young mother, and her father. It is an uncomfortable time for them both after the death of Ruma’s mother. Ruma’s father visits her in Seattle where she is expecting her second child. She is hesitant to ask him to move in with her family, although if it had been her father who passed away first her mother would have moved in immediately. Her father doesn’t know how to tell her he’s met someone else and has no intention of moving away from Pennsylvania. Ruma finds him unexpectedly helpful with her son and around the house and does decide to ask him to live with her family. Here are her father’s thoughts:
“A part of him, the part of him that would never cease to be a father, felt obligated to accept. But it was not what he wanted. Being here for a week, however pleasant, had only confirmed the fact. He did not want to be part of another family, part of the mess, the feuds, the demands, the energy of it. He did not want to live in the margins of his daughter’s life, in the shadow of her marriage. He didn’t want to live again in an enormous house that would only fill up with things over the years, as the children grew, all the things he’d recently gotten rid of, all the books and papers and clothes and objects one felt compelled to possess, to save.”
Another story, “Only Goodness”, tells of Sudha and her younger brother, Rahul. Sudha attends and graduates from U. Penn. and heads to graduate school in London. Meanwhile Rahul fails out of Cornell and it becomes obvious to Sudha that he is an alcoholic. Her parents attempt to ignore his alcoholism for a long time. And, then, are powerless to do anything about it. Sudha attempts a reconciliation with Rahul after the birth of her first child. This failed reconciliation and the guilt she feels over being the first one to give him a beer, back when he was in high school, are powerful to read. Here she attempts early on to lend advice when he is having trouble in college:
“His words silenced her, cut to the bone. She’d always had a heavy hand in his life, it was true, striving not to control it but to improve it somehow. She had always considered this her responsibility to him. She had not known how to be a sister any other way.”
Lahiri does an excellent job at dissecting relationships between family members whether parent and child or spouses. I focused here more on the parent-child interactions, but her other stories are also well worth reading. I’m inspired to add her novel, The Namesake, to my reading list.
One of the stories that will stick with me is “Unaccustomed Earth.” It is told from the third person points of view of both Ruma, a young mother, and her father. It is an uncomfortable time for them both after the death of Ruma’s mother. Ruma’s father visits her in Seattle where she is expecting her second child. She is hesitant to ask him to move in with her family, although if it had been her father who passed away first her mother would have moved in immediately. Her father doesn’t know how to tell her he’s met someone else and has no intention of moving away from Pennsylvania. Ruma finds him unexpectedly helpful with her son and around the house and does decide to ask him to live with her family. Here are her father’s thoughts:
“A part of him, the part of him that would never cease to be a father, felt obligated to accept. But it was not what he wanted. Being here for a week, however pleasant, had only confirmed the fact. He did not want to be part of another family, part of the mess, the feuds, the demands, the energy of it. He did not want to live in the margins of his daughter’s life, in the shadow of her marriage. He didn’t want to live again in an enormous house that would only fill up with things over the years, as the children grew, all the things he’d recently gotten rid of, all the books and papers and clothes and objects one felt compelled to possess, to save.”
Another story, “Only Goodness”, tells of Sudha and her younger brother, Rahul. Sudha attends and graduates from U. Penn. and heads to graduate school in London. Meanwhile Rahul fails out of Cornell and it becomes obvious to Sudha that he is an alcoholic. Her parents attempt to ignore his alcoholism for a long time. And, then, are powerless to do anything about it. Sudha attempts a reconciliation with Rahul after the birth of her first child. This failed reconciliation and the guilt she feels over being the first one to give him a beer, back when he was in high school, are powerful to read. Here she attempts early on to lend advice when he is having trouble in college:
“His words silenced her, cut to the bone. She’d always had a heavy hand in his life, it was true, striving not to control it but to improve it somehow. She had always considered this her responsibility to him. She had not known how to be a sister any other way.”
Lahiri does an excellent job at dissecting relationships between family members whether parent and child or spouses. I focused here more on the parent-child interactions, but her other stories are also well worth reading. I’m inspired to add her novel, The Namesake, to my reading list.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Cowboys are My Weakness by Pam Houston
Pam Houston is one of the authors invited to this year’s The Nature of Words. She writes fiction, although on her website she is quoted as saying that 82% of what she writes is true. That means that her stories are somewhat, but not quite, autobiographical. Cowboys are My Weakness, published in 1992, is filled with stories of tough women in relationships where communication just doesn’t quite happen.
Her stories are mostly set in the west, in places like Montana or Utah. My favorite story in this collection is called “Selway”. The narrator of the story and Jack, her boyfriend, set off to raft a river that is impossibly high with treacherous rapids. Houston does a remarkable job of portraying both the adventure junkie and the girl who won’t back down. “Jack was untamable, but he had some sense and a lot of respect for the river. He relied on me to speak with the voice of reason, to be life-protecting because I’m a woman and that’s how he thinks women are, but I’ve never been protective enough of anything, least of all myself.” This story reminds me of the adrenaline rush of rafting and leaves me wondering why, once I left college, I never went again.
In the title story the protagonist wants to find a cowboy of her own and ends up on a ranch in Montana. I thought the following was pretty interesting to think about: “The west isn’t a place that gives itself up easily. Newcomers have to sink into it slowly, to descend through its layers, and I’m still descending. Like most easterners, I started out in the transitional zones, the big cities and the ski towns that outsiders have set up for their own comfort, the places so often referred to as ‘the best of both worlds.’” Bend, the town Houston is coming to for the The Nature of Words, is a ski town, but has really only been transforming itself into a resort town for outsiders for the last 10 years. Or, at least that is my impression. I wonder where it falls on the scale of being western. It seems the west as an idea doesn’t really encompass the coastal areas where I grew up, but more the big sky open areas from the Cascades to slightly east of the Rockies.
Many of the stories in this collection have dogs or horses in them and her debut novel, and most recent work, is called Sighthound. I am interested to read her next set of short stories called Waltzing the Cat to find out if her heroines have learned how to communicate.
Her stories are mostly set in the west, in places like Montana or Utah. My favorite story in this collection is called “Selway”. The narrator of the story and Jack, her boyfriend, set off to raft a river that is impossibly high with treacherous rapids. Houston does a remarkable job of portraying both the adventure junkie and the girl who won’t back down. “Jack was untamable, but he had some sense and a lot of respect for the river. He relied on me to speak with the voice of reason, to be life-protecting because I’m a woman and that’s how he thinks women are, but I’ve never been protective enough of anything, least of all myself.” This story reminds me of the adrenaline rush of rafting and leaves me wondering why, once I left college, I never went again.
In the title story the protagonist wants to find a cowboy of her own and ends up on a ranch in Montana. I thought the following was pretty interesting to think about: “The west isn’t a place that gives itself up easily. Newcomers have to sink into it slowly, to descend through its layers, and I’m still descending. Like most easterners, I started out in the transitional zones, the big cities and the ski towns that outsiders have set up for their own comfort, the places so often referred to as ‘the best of both worlds.’” Bend, the town Houston is coming to for the The Nature of Words, is a ski town, but has really only been transforming itself into a resort town for outsiders for the last 10 years. Or, at least that is my impression. I wonder where it falls on the scale of being western. It seems the west as an idea doesn’t really encompass the coastal areas where I grew up, but more the big sky open areas from the Cascades to slightly east of the Rockies.
Many of the stories in this collection have dogs or horses in them and her debut novel, and most recent work, is called Sighthound. I am interested to read her next set of short stories called Waltzing the Cat to find out if her heroines have learned how to communicate.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Springtime on Mars by Susan Woodring
Springtime on Mars is a collection of stories that has nothing to do with science fiction, despite the title. The stories are grounded in the reality of the minute details of everyday life. It almost seems like the most intriguing stories in this collection are toward the end of the book. I am not sure if that is true or if it is just that Woodring’s writing began to resonate more with me at that point.
The stories that really struck me were the ones where a life changing event occurred. In “The Neighbors” two couples experience significant events on the same day. One husband is hit by lightning. Woodring deftly describes how he can’t recognize his wife. “Mainly, he wondered who was this woman who leaned over him holding a plastic cup of water to his lips. She smelled like a coin, warm and moist in the palm of his hand, but he couldn’t trust his senses since the water tasted like copper.” (pg 158) I could almost taste that coppery tang while reading those lines.
Woodring also places the stories in context around historical happenings. In the story entitled “Radio Vision” JFK has been shot. A few days later a woman is electrocuted in her basement. It is interesting to think that even while our nation was in mourning for the president, accidents and tragedies that did not make the headlines must have had huge impacts on individual families or communities and were sort of under the shadow of the larger national event. I did wish that this story continued and dealt more with the aftermath of this woman’s death on her nine-year-old twins.
The title story in this collection is definitely worth reading. It is available on the author’s website. Woodring’s strengths include that she can write from the point-of-view of an elderly man or a young girl and make you believe it, and I think she has a very subtle yet illuminating way of capturing a tragedy on paper.
For more information on the author and to see what other reviewers had to say check out Blog Stop Book Tours.
The stories that really struck me were the ones where a life changing event occurred. In “The Neighbors” two couples experience significant events on the same day. One husband is hit by lightning. Woodring deftly describes how he can’t recognize his wife. “Mainly, he wondered who was this woman who leaned over him holding a plastic cup of water to his lips. She smelled like a coin, warm and moist in the palm of his hand, but he couldn’t trust his senses since the water tasted like copper.” (pg 158) I could almost taste that coppery tang while reading those lines.
Woodring also places the stories in context around historical happenings. In the story entitled “Radio Vision” JFK has been shot. A few days later a woman is electrocuted in her basement. It is interesting to think that even while our nation was in mourning for the president, accidents and tragedies that did not make the headlines must have had huge impacts on individual families or communities and were sort of under the shadow of the larger national event. I did wish that this story continued and dealt more with the aftermath of this woman’s death on her nine-year-old twins.
The title story in this collection is definitely worth reading. It is available on the author’s website. Woodring’s strengths include that she can write from the point-of-view of an elderly man or a young girl and make you believe it, and I think she has a very subtle yet illuminating way of capturing a tragedy on paper.
For more information on the author and to see what other reviewers had to say check out Blog Stop Book Tours.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Apologies Forthcoming by Xujun Eberlein
I was in a lab in graduate school that had graduate students and post-docs from all over the world. While I was there we had people from China, Germany, Canada, Japan, Holland, Taiwan, Italy, Korea, and the US, and possibly a few other places. After reading Apologies Forthcoming by Xujun Eberlein, I wish I had taken the time to find out more of their background stories and how each person ended up there in that particular lab.
This collection of short stories by Eberlein focuses on China during and after the Cultural Revolution. They are powerful stories. Stories that leave you wondering how a country could put itself back together. It is a very timely release right before the Beijing Olympics when the attention on China is going to be intense. Can you imagine a ten-year period where all the colleges and most high schools in a country were shut down? Educated people were sent to the countryside to be re-educated. Teenagers were separated from their families and sent into the Red Guard or off to the countryside as well.
In a story entitled, “The Randomness of Love”, a seventeen-year-old girl explains why she is in the countryside. “ 'All other countries in the world have population flowing from the countryside to the cities: only China is practicing the opposite. Our population flows from the cities to the countryside. This is a creative revolutionary movement, and its historical significance can never be overestimated.' ” Fast-forward ten years later and this disillusioned woman is having trouble adjusting to her boring job and begins an affair with a married man. And, it seems to me that she is one of the lucky ones, surviving her insertion into the countryside near the end of the Cultural Revolution and making it to college.
Other stories are full of despair. The author draws on some of her own experiences during the Cultural Revolution, including the death of her older sister as a Red Guard. In “Feathers” a ten-year-old girl must pretend that her sister is still alive. She enlists the help of those who live around her so that her grandmother will not know. It seems a horrendous burden on a ten-year-old, yet amongst everything else that is happening you can almost see how a mother would allow it. Almost. The stories are dark, yet they are not without hope and they are definitely worth reading. Eberlein portrays not only the victims, but also those who served in the Red Guard or told on their neighbors. No one can escape being one or the other, or oftentimes both in these kinds of circumstances.
The Cultural Revolution, or rather, what is now known as Ten Disastrous Years, ended in 1976. That means the post-doc and graduate students from China in my lab must have lived through a portion of it. Maybe they lucked out and caught the tail end where they still managed to get a high school education and the tests to get into college were being restarted. Definitely their parents lived through this time. It is interesting to me now that we never discussed this and that to all intents and purposes we adapted to working in the same lab in the US despite our vastly different experiences. Is that the true power of education?
Check out Blog Stop Book Tours for more information on the author and to see what other reviewers have to say about Apologies Forthcoming.
This collection of short stories by Eberlein focuses on China during and after the Cultural Revolution. They are powerful stories. Stories that leave you wondering how a country could put itself back together. It is a very timely release right before the Beijing Olympics when the attention on China is going to be intense. Can you imagine a ten-year period where all the colleges and most high schools in a country were shut down? Educated people were sent to the countryside to be re-educated. Teenagers were separated from their families and sent into the Red Guard or off to the countryside as well.
In a story entitled, “The Randomness of Love”, a seventeen-year-old girl explains why she is in the countryside. “ 'All other countries in the world have population flowing from the countryside to the cities: only China is practicing the opposite. Our population flows from the cities to the countryside. This is a creative revolutionary movement, and its historical significance can never be overestimated.' ” Fast-forward ten years later and this disillusioned woman is having trouble adjusting to her boring job and begins an affair with a married man. And, it seems to me that she is one of the lucky ones, surviving her insertion into the countryside near the end of the Cultural Revolution and making it to college.
Other stories are full of despair. The author draws on some of her own experiences during the Cultural Revolution, including the death of her older sister as a Red Guard. In “Feathers” a ten-year-old girl must pretend that her sister is still alive. She enlists the help of those who live around her so that her grandmother will not know. It seems a horrendous burden on a ten-year-old, yet amongst everything else that is happening you can almost see how a mother would allow it. Almost. The stories are dark, yet they are not without hope and they are definitely worth reading. Eberlein portrays not only the victims, but also those who served in the Red Guard or told on their neighbors. No one can escape being one or the other, or oftentimes both in these kinds of circumstances.
The Cultural Revolution, or rather, what is now known as Ten Disastrous Years, ended in 1976. That means the post-doc and graduate students from China in my lab must have lived through a portion of it. Maybe they lucked out and caught the tail end where they still managed to get a high school education and the tests to get into college were being restarted. Definitely their parents lived through this time. It is interesting to me now that we never discussed this and that to all intents and purposes we adapted to working in the same lab in the US despite our vastly different experiences. Is that the true power of education?
Check out Blog Stop Book Tours for more information on the author and to see what other reviewers have to say about Apologies Forthcoming.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Language of Elk by Benjamin Percy
Benjamin Percy is another author that was invited to Bend for The Nature of Words last fall. I intended to read something by him then, but the library did not have his two collections of short stories at the time. They do now and The Language of Elk is well worth reading.
I think what Benjamin Percy does that is unique in his writing is to take a piece of Central Oregon that seems normal to people who live here and then add a twist. In the short story entitled, “The Iron Moth” Big Boy describes his hometown of Cairo, Oregon where he was a high school football star.
“Now rather than earning your tan, moving irrigation pipe and bucking hay bales into a pickup bed all afternoon, you get inside some capsule that glows like a bug-zapper and has about the same effect in frying you to a crisp. Now, every time I turn around there’s a new microbrewery or sushi joint or European car dealership, all of them springing up overnight like mushrooms.
Now, most everybody who lives here is from someplace else.”
Big Boy kills time with a friend by shooting anvils off the cinder cone in the center of town. Obviously, he is referring to Pilot Butte in Bend and it is quite a picture to imagine that going on in the center of town. The obvious discomfort and trouble for Big Boy to fit into his changing hometown are issues many people must deal with daily. I rarely meet anyone who identifies themself as a Bend native in my everyday life. I guess considering there were only 10,000 people here a decade ago and there are more than 75,000 now that is not too surprising.
Many of Percy’s stories bring up aspects of the local area that you might not think about or be exposed to if you just go about your daily life. There is the father and son in “Unearthed” who spend their time, after the death of the wife/mother, digging up Indian artifacts in the deserts of Eastern Oregon. That story takes a rather uncomfortable turn. The title story is set on a farm where hunters pay a fee to come in and shoot farmed elk. I recently read about a local ranch that does that. The characters that Percy draws are somehow sympathetic even while doing some unusual things.
I read the best story by Percy yet in the Fall 2007 issue of GlimmerTrain. I picked the journal up just to see what was in it and reading this short story reminded me of The Language of Elk that I had yet to read. The local paper here does a story about every other year on a family who has a house over a lava tube. It is always interesting to read and the family talks about using the natural cooling of the cave and having slumber parties in it. Percy takes this rather odd situation and turns it into a dramatic short story of a couple living over a lava tube in “The Caves in Oregon”. I also find it interesting that often the people in his short stories are professors at the local college, the woman in this story is a geology professor, or somehow connected.
I hope Percy puts his talents to use in writing a novel soon. I’m sure it would be entertaining and slightly edgy.
I think what Benjamin Percy does that is unique in his writing is to take a piece of Central Oregon that seems normal to people who live here and then add a twist. In the short story entitled, “The Iron Moth” Big Boy describes his hometown of Cairo, Oregon where he was a high school football star.
“Now rather than earning your tan, moving irrigation pipe and bucking hay bales into a pickup bed all afternoon, you get inside some capsule that glows like a bug-zapper and has about the same effect in frying you to a crisp. Now, every time I turn around there’s a new microbrewery or sushi joint or European car dealership, all of them springing up overnight like mushrooms.
Now, most everybody who lives here is from someplace else.”
Big Boy kills time with a friend by shooting anvils off the cinder cone in the center of town. Obviously, he is referring to Pilot Butte in Bend and it is quite a picture to imagine that going on in the center of town. The obvious discomfort and trouble for Big Boy to fit into his changing hometown are issues many people must deal with daily. I rarely meet anyone who identifies themself as a Bend native in my everyday life. I guess considering there were only 10,000 people here a decade ago and there are more than 75,000 now that is not too surprising.
Many of Percy’s stories bring up aspects of the local area that you might not think about or be exposed to if you just go about your daily life. There is the father and son in “Unearthed” who spend their time, after the death of the wife/mother, digging up Indian artifacts in the deserts of Eastern Oregon. That story takes a rather uncomfortable turn. The title story is set on a farm where hunters pay a fee to come in and shoot farmed elk. I recently read about a local ranch that does that. The characters that Percy draws are somehow sympathetic even while doing some unusual things.
I read the best story by Percy yet in the Fall 2007 issue of GlimmerTrain. I picked the journal up just to see what was in it and reading this short story reminded me of The Language of Elk that I had yet to read. The local paper here does a story about every other year on a family who has a house over a lava tube. It is always interesting to read and the family talks about using the natural cooling of the cave and having slumber parties in it. Percy takes this rather odd situation and turns it into a dramatic short story of a couple living over a lava tube in “The Caves in Oregon”. I also find it interesting that often the people in his short stories are professors at the local college, the woman in this story is a geology professor, or somehow connected.
I hope Percy puts his talents to use in writing a novel soon. I’m sure it would be entertaining and slightly edgy.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The Littlest Hitler by Ryan Boudinot
Usually I do not like short stories. By the time you’re just getting into the story, it’s over. However, I have to make an exception for this compilation of short stories by Ryan Boudinot. Yes, I am biased as he grew up in the same town that I did and he writes about picking bulbs! Can you imagine a childhood summer sitting in the dirt and digging bulbs out by hand for $0.02 a foot? Here are two excerpts from his short story So Little Time:
“Picking bulbs sucks donkey ass.”
“After the third day or so of picking, holes start appearing in your gloves and when you blow your nose mud comes out. Five days a week, from seven in the morning to four in the afternoon. Sitting on bare ground, eating Hostess fruit pies with dirty hands.”
Of course, I never had anything as glamorous as a Hostess fruit pie in my lunch. I am reminded that this is a fictional story, as the characters picking bulbs here get a time-out inside when it rains and food from McDonalds. That never happened in my year-and-a-half of picking bulbs. I do remember being under the threat of being fired every day as I could barely make the 400 feet per day quota. I am sure that this ominous threat when I was 10 and 11 years old must have had some impact on my psyche.
But, back to So Little Time and the other stories in this collection. The bulb picking is simply background for a pretty depressing, yet eloquent, look at poverty through the eyes of a junior high student. Another story that I found interesting is Written By Machines, which explores the urban Seattle techie life and the idea that computer code can be a beautiful thing. The title story, The Littlest Hitler, begins with a fourth grader’s idea of going as something scary, Hitler, for Halloween. It doesn’t turn out so well when another classmate shows up as Anne Frank.
Pick up this collection if you get a chance, or encourage your library to order it. I have to admit I did not like all the stories equally and some are more violent or graphic than others, but they were all worth reading. And, interesting to consider how bulb picking may have impacted many kids growing up in one small county in Washington state.
“Picking bulbs sucks donkey ass.”
“After the third day or so of picking, holes start appearing in your gloves and when you blow your nose mud comes out. Five days a week, from seven in the morning to four in the afternoon. Sitting on bare ground, eating Hostess fruit pies with dirty hands.”
Of course, I never had anything as glamorous as a Hostess fruit pie in my lunch. I am reminded that this is a fictional story, as the characters picking bulbs here get a time-out inside when it rains and food from McDonalds. That never happened in my year-and-a-half of picking bulbs. I do remember being under the threat of being fired every day as I could barely make the 400 feet per day quota. I am sure that this ominous threat when I was 10 and 11 years old must have had some impact on my psyche.
But, back to So Little Time and the other stories in this collection. The bulb picking is simply background for a pretty depressing, yet eloquent, look at poverty through the eyes of a junior high student. Another story that I found interesting is Written By Machines, which explores the urban Seattle techie life and the idea that computer code can be a beautiful thing. The title story, The Littlest Hitler, begins with a fourth grader’s idea of going as something scary, Hitler, for Halloween. It doesn’t turn out so well when another classmate shows up as Anne Frank.
Pick up this collection if you get a chance, or encourage your library to order it. I have to admit I did not like all the stories equally and some are more violent or graphic than others, but they were all worth reading. And, interesting to consider how bulb picking may have impacted many kids growing up in one small county in Washington state.
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