Disappointed with it, only 3 of the 13 stories get a 4 or 5 rating for me. Millhauser is an imaginative writer who excels at describing very specific details in a certain dryly whimsical way, and I find his style quite appealing. But too many of the ideas in this book didn't match that appeal for me. Others did, but then the result was unaffecting. Only 'In the Reign of Harad IV' really gets me excited from this collection, a story that marries Millhauser's style, plot, and human being to create wonderment and feeling.

Merged review:

All time favorite short story. ( )

Millhauser's stories each have a central conceit - a tower built to heaven, a suit that replicates touch sensations (built in a facility resembling Edison's Menlo Park), a friendship only conducted in the dark, "laughing parties". These ideas veer towards science fiction, but Millhauser grounds them in enough detail to give the illusion of possibility. If you are looking for typical narrative structure, look elsewhere - instead these stories are snapshots of the author's fertile imagination. The end result is a book that feels self-indulgent, with ideas that the author finds fascinating; too bad the reader is left on the periphery of this fascination. ( )

ugh.

i was interested in this collection of short stories when it first came out in hardcover and i was working at the bookstore. contrary to the old adage, we do judge books by their covers, but we are at least decent enough to judge them positively as well as negatively. (by the way, the worst cover i've ever seen is
this one.)

anyway, i was intrigued by this cover, and even more so when i learned that it was a collection of somewhat fantastical-realist stories; they take place in the everyday world, to an extent, but they bend reality past the horizontal. i like this sort of thing.

funny that i didn't read it then, but that i found a copy four years later, in the tiny english books section of a discount bookstore here in Wrocław, Poland. sitting beside one copy of tree of smoke and a slew of strangely eclectic dover classics, i felt that pull again. the equivalent of $3 later, i found myself reading a highly-detailed retelling of a tom and jerry cartoon.

i hate tom and jerry -- always have. i've thought about this a lot, because i love the roadrunner cartoons, but tom and jerry make me somehow both bored and angry. why? the former was a reaction to, and satire of, the latter, so maybe that's it. as a child who had more than my fair share of violence around me, i was drawn to that ridiculous step further that the roadrunner cartoons took -- things aren't so bad if you can laugh at them. of course, i always rooted for wile e. coyote.

so, a retelling of tom and jerry, albeit with added anthropomorphism and emotion, didn't interest me.

ok, so the next story. interesting at first, until i realize it's basically a plot lifted from an episode of buffy the vampire slayer (i checked -- as far as i could tell, it was first published about two years after the original airdate of the episode -- in the new yorker). still a nice, touching story, but batting 0 for 2 here.

well, then, the next story was really intriguing, and i was pulled in and ready to forgive. i was really interested in the idea of a relationship that could only exist in the dark, and what happens when even the thought of light intrudes? or, another thought, what actually exists without sight? so i was back in, and willing to read the rest.

the next story, the title story, was also interesting, but the characters seemed unnecessarily heartless. sure, they're kids, but still. this was a trend that would continue through the rest of the book, barring one story -- the characters seem to exist only to report the happenings, with little real emotion or reaction of their own. even when they do react, it feels muffled, distant, a reflection of a reflection. an author telling me that someone is feeling something.

so, that one exception to the seeming rule is "history of a disturbance," which was by far my favorite story here. it, too, seemed to owe its plot to something else, an older story by JG ballard, the overloaded man. in fact, i would posit that this could be considered a rewrite of that story, but here the protagonist has no choice in the matter of his changing perceptions of reality (and, he loves his spouse). the story takes the shape of a letter he is writing to his wife, trying to explain what has been happening to him. he is losing words, or losing their connection to a universal meaning. this is a progressive state, and though it strains credulity that he would be able to so eloquently describe it, i still enjoyed this story a lot. the narrator's feelings are also distant/nonexistent, but here it works, and you can feel the love he had for his wife in his descriptions of her reactions.

so, the two stars i give this book are for the two stories i really enjoyed reading. as for the rest ...

all of the stories i've described so far make up the first part of the book (aside from the "cartoon," which is considered a prologue of sorts) titled "vanishing act." the other two sections focus on architecture and history, in a number of various ways, all of which seem to translate into "what if [insert absurd or fantastical situation/reality here]?" being asked and then answered by soulless characters or uninvested narrators who seem to do nothing but report facts. some of these scenarios are interesting, but they made me yearn for a different sort of presentation by a different author. the only one that really seemed to fit this style of reported narration was "the tower," and maybe i'd add another half a star for it, if i could. but the last two stories were nigh unbearable due to their length, especially since the last one is supposed to be the diary of a librarian working in edison's compound. the author chose to demonstrate this diary-ness by leaving out certain words -- dropping articles and auxiliaries, etc. but this is applied inconsistently, often in a fashion that seems completely unnatural, and the effect is jarring and annoying. long, complete, and intricate sentences stand beside poorly-shortened others. this was the last story -- i couldn't wait for the book to end.

on second thought, i'll take that half star back now.

all in all, others have enjoyed this and i don't want to detract from that, but the book mostly annoyed me, when it wasn't giving me small moments of insight mixed with great, gulping chasms of irritation. ( )

3.5 stars--The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman is such an excellent story.

( )

Great. Today showed up on the NYT top 5 fiction books of the year. I picked a winnah!
The Dome was particularly good. Great riff. ( )