How It Was for Me: Stories
by Andrew Sean Greer
This is an Online Internet Book Club on How It Was for Me: Stories by Andrew Sean Greer. Discuss this book, share your thoughts, make comments, ask questions, offer responses...
Description
An auspicious debut of American realistic short fiction, How It Was for Me manages to strike every emotional tone from sweetness to despair, like a short symphony. The dominant tone is one of rueful self-recognition, often in retrospect. In "Lost Causes," for example, a man looks back on a four-month period in his early twenties in which he was, for the first and last time, achingly beautiful, the sort of boy who makes even straight men stare in appreciation. He had no idea at the time that he been transported into beauty, and even now, recalling his brief blossoming, remembers it only through "the evidence of my face's effect: men fixing my computer for free, paying for my bus fare, arguing over me in bars." He made no important use of this four-month window, and it passed, leaving only photographs. The handsome protagonist of "The Walker" is similarly unaware, a widower who spends the evenings of his grief escorting wealthy divorcees and widows to the opera. Deftly executed, with odd, mordant touches, Greer's eleven stories put him in the ranks of Nathan Englander. With luck, he will reach as large an audience.--Regina Marler
Book Club Questions for How It Was for Me (Fiction)
Book Club Questions for How It Was for Me (for Non-Fiction)
Description
An auspicious debut of American realistic short fiction, How It Was for Me manages to strike every emotional tone from sweetness to despair, like a short symphony. The dominant tone is one of rueful self-recognition, often in retrospect. In "Lost Causes," for example, a man looks back on a four-month period in his early twenties in which he was, for the first and last time, achingly beautiful, the sort of boy who makes even straight men stare in appreciation. He had no idea at the time that he been transported into beauty, and even now, recalling his brief blossoming, remembers it only through "the evidence of my face's effect: men fixing my computer for free, paying for my bus fare, arguing over me in bars." He made no important use of this four-month window, and it passed, leaving only photographs. The handsome protagonist of "The Walker" is similarly unaware, a widower who spends the evenings of his grief escorting wealthy divorcees and widows to the opera. Deftly executed, with odd, mordant touches, Greer's eleven stories put him in the ranks of Nathan Englander. With luck, he will reach as large an audience.--Regina Marler
Book Club Questions for How It Was for Me (Fiction)
Book Club Questions for How It Was for Me (for Non-Fiction)
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