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Bezig met laden... Refund: Storiesdoor Karen E. Bender
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Excellent writing, but I found the stories a bit empty and inconsistent. Open ended endings are really not my thing. Once and awhile they're OK, but the vast majority of the endings simply leave the reader hanging. The hype on the book jacket made it sound like this was one of the best books of short stories ever put to paper. Although good, and I do recommend it, the hyperbole overshadowed the actual content. ( ) This book was a national book award finalist and she has just come out with a new book so I thought I would read this. The subject matter for the most part of these short stories revolved around money and all the attending issues. It mainly deals with women narrators who are struggling with family issues that revolve around their kids, money, work, bad marriages etc. Overall it is not a happy book but it was very creative and the writing was excellent. Because 2-3 of the stories did not work for me, I did not rate it higher. However if all of the stories had the quality of the best ones then I would have rated this a 5 star. Short stories are not for everyone because they tend to have no real conclusions in many cases. Because you can pick and choose the stories here, this is definitely a worthwhile read. I will check out her new book. The only word to describe this particular set of short stories is dour. They were all so similar in theme that is was difficult to infer anything new from one to the other, and generally unmemorable as a whole. I was left with a very bitter taste in my mouth and was happy to have arrived at the end. I usually don't like litfic that's built around lots of feels and empty marriages and basically what feels like a lot of white middle-class MFA tropes. Bender actually had me into the stories, starting with the one with the executive producer of Anything for Money. That story was brutal and amazing, probably my favorite of the collection. Overall, a set of exquisite little miniatures that challenged my usual boredom with this set of themes. A wide variety of thought provoking short stories by a master of the genre. These are virtually twenty five page novels such is the depth of the characterizations and plot. The book's title story deals with a couple who are trying to sublet their New York dwelling space un fortunately during the period of 9-11. Others involve a game show where people were willing to do "Anything for the Money" and another is about a pair of sisters one of which has an impaired hand she must compensate for. I can certainly see why this book garnered all the acclaim that it did. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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"We think about it every day, sometimes every hour: Money. Who has it. Who doesn't. How you get it. How you don't. In Refund, Bender creates an award-winning collection of stories that deeply explore the ways in which money and the estimation of value affect the lives of her characters. The stories in Refund reflect our contemporary world-swindlers, reality show creators, desperate artists, siblings, parents - who try to answer the question: What is the real definition of worth? In "Theft," an eighty-year-old swindler, accustomed to tricking people for their money, boards a cruise ship to see if she can find something of true value-a human connection. In "Anything for Money," the creator of a reality show is thrown into the real world when his estranged granddaughter reenters his life in need of a new heart; and in the title story, young artist parents in downtown Manhattan escape the attack on 9/11 only to face a battle over their subletted apartment with a stranger who might have lost more than only her deposit. Set in contemporary America, these stories herald a work of singular literary merit by an important writer at the height of her power"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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