Community Reviews
As anyone who knows me knows, I live for short story collections.
Ok, that isn't really true. Most people who actually know me "in real life" would have no idea that I love short stories. Even my mom wouldn't have a clue.
But it is true that my love for short stories runs deep.
This may be one of my favorite short story collections. Top five for sure. And to make the "Natalie's Top Five Short Story Collections" list, every word needs to count.
Paul Yoon writes in a way that makes me feel like I'm in a dream. An extremely beautiful, haunting, melancholy dream that I don't want to end. I'm traveling to places and landscapes I've never been to before. I'm witnessing love (not always nor not usually the romantic kind) that feels more like pain than walking on clouds. I'm observing people I've never met, people I can barely identify with beyond that gnawing loneliness that ties us together with a thin taut thread.
Do you know this feeling? You're living whatever day you're in and suddenly feel a longing. As though there's been an absence in you all this time and you never knew. But you don't know what it is. You can't find it. And it eats at you. For days it eats at you. Do you know it?
I was almost disappointed to read that Yoon lives in Massachusetts and teaches at Harvard. I had the most wonderful vision of him hunkered down in a cabin in the mountains, writing only late into the night by the light of a slowly dripping candle and early in the morning when the sun is just first peeking over the horizon and the air is chilled and damp. But I guess teaching at Harvard is cool, too.
5 Stars
Ok, that isn't really true. Most people who actually know me "in real life" would have no idea that I love short stories. Even my mom wouldn't have a clue.
But it is true that my love for short stories runs deep.
This may be one of my favorite short story collections. Top five for sure. And to make the "Natalie's Top Five Short Story Collections" list, every word needs to count.
Paul Yoon writes in a way that makes me feel like I'm in a dream. An extremely beautiful, haunting, melancholy dream that I don't want to end. I'm traveling to places and landscapes I've never been to before. I'm witnessing love (not always nor not usually the romantic kind) that feels more like pain than walking on clouds. I'm observing people I've never met, people I can barely identify with beyond that gnawing loneliness that ties us together with a thin taut thread.
Do you know this feeling? You're living whatever day you're in and suddenly feel a longing. As though there's been an absence in you all this time and you never knew. But you don't know what it is. You can't find it. And it eats at you. For days it eats at you. Do you know it?
I was almost disappointed to read that Yoon lives in Massachusetts and teaches at Harvard. I had the most wonderful vision of him hunkered down in a cabin in the mountains, writing only late into the night by the light of a slowly dripping candle and early in the morning when the sun is just first peeking over the horizon and the air is chilled and damp. But I guess teaching at Harvard is cool, too.
5 Stars
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