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Title: Mendocino and Other Stories by Ann Packer ISBN: 1-4000-3163-X Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 14 January, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Rich, smart, detailed, thoughtful.
Comment: I simply adored each story. I spaced out each story reading to be sure to enjoy it as slowly as i could and make the pleasure last. Ann Packer is a philosopher. She writes like a poet scientist. She doesn't reduce complexity, by saying just what needs to be said, nothing more.
I really recommend it. I usually prefer novels to short stories, because they sometimes leave me feeling hanging...but this is one of the best short stories collection i have ever read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Relationships Redux
Comment: Ann Packer has assembled a natty group of ten stories that will thoroughly please the innocent voyeur within you. She takes you into the homes, minds, and hearts of her characters and introduces you to their environment, thoughts, and feelings. Her characters are real and likable.
I have a certain affinity for the short story that lets me eavesdrop on the lives of others, and these fit the bill in every way. Most of them take place in the San Francisco area and if you have ever visited you may be reminiscent of your time spent there and even yearn to return again.
Other than relationships, there is no true formula to these stories, and that's a good thing! "Ninety" is about the curmudgeonly Papa Louie's 90th birthday, his daughters and their families. "Lightning" describes a childless couple who take in a pregnant girl before they adopt her baby. "My Mother's Yellow Dress" describes a gay man's memories of his parents' marriage and his relationship with his mother. All unique, all excellent reads.
Rating: 4
Summary: Ann Packer is back with a collection that will enchant you
Comment: Ann Packer's stories are like gourmet mashed potatoes --- ordinary, everyday material, transformed to quintessence by a masterful hand. This volume is a reissue by Vintage of a previous (1994) collection, ten stories gathered from already-published sources and printed under the name of the title story, MENDOCINO. Readers who were first introduced to Ms. Packer by the success of last year's novel, THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER, will be glad to have this opportunity to read more of her fiction.
She writes with deceptive ease, most often lulling the reader into a sort of warmish, homey daze. That is, until she zaps you with the powerful insight that is the hallmark of all her work. Her perception of the human condition is an even greater gift than her pure writing ability --- and she has both qualities in abundance. Reading a Packer story is both as exhausting and rewarding as long-anticipated family visits.
She writes of relationships --- not only the relationships of one person to another, but also of that deeper and more difficult to acknowledge relationship: the one we each have with ourselves. There is no better example of both than her lead story, "Mendocino."
The second story of the ten, "Nerves," leans somewhat more in the direction of the second type of relationship and the unveiling of this truth is excruciatingly, exquisitely paced.
My personal favorite of all the stories is "Lightening" because it is both somewhat more complex than the others and, for me anyway, the zappiest.
I am not copping out as a reviewer here when I say that each and every one of the ten stories in this volume is so densely woven and of such intense construction that I would do both the author and the reader a disservice if I were to try to say what each story "is about." Nor am I being too tongue-in-cheek when I say that each story is approximately five thousand words. There are no plots to reveal as such, not like in a novel. Each story recounts incidents in the lives of the characters and places them in a chosen setting. Do we need to know that about half the stories take place in Northern California, while the rest are on the East Coast or in the Midwest? Not really, because it's the inner landscape that matters to Ann Packer.
Read, enjoy and learn from her. I can't really tell you about it. You'll have to see for yourself, in the same way that you have to eat the master chef's mashed potatoes to experience the magnitude of that difference.
--- Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day
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Title: The Dive From Clausen's Pier : A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries (Paperback)) by ANN PACKER ISBN: 0375727132 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 08 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Beautiful Girls: Stories by Beth Ann Bauman ISBN: 1931561354 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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Title: why I'm like this : True Stories by Cynthia Kaplan ISBN: 006051261X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Taft : A Novel by Ann Patchett ISBN: 0060540761 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Crow Lake (Today Show Book Club #7) by Mary Lawson ISBN: 0385337639 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 13 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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