May-Lan Tan

Things to Make and Break is a collection of short fiction. Some of the "stories" seemed to lack the full development they needed to truly tell a story: they read more like descriptions of episodes than like actual stories.
Since this is a collection of stories, I expected to find some I liked, some I didn't and some that left no impression at all, but I was disappointed to find, instead, stories I disliked and others which left little impression at all.
The entire volume is dark, glum, pessimistic. There are no characters with whom to relate, for whom to feel empathy or even strong enough to really leave an impression. They are ghosts haunting life and making it unlivable. Even the all too vivid descriptions of sex seem more like unhappy, joyless incidents in which the characters perform sex, neither for love nor pleasure, but just to do it.
Overall, I felt like the entire collection was written by someone who has been on anti-depressants her whole life and really needed to up her dose; they aren't working.… (plus d'informations)

Things to Make and Break is a collection of short fiction. Some of the "stories" seemed to lack the full development they needed to truly tell a story: they read more like descriptions of episodes than like actual stories.
Since this is a collection of stories, I expected to find some I liked, some I didn't and some that left no impression at all, but I was disappointed to find, instead, stories I disliked and others which left little impression at all.
The entire volume is dark, glum, pessimistic. There are no characters with whom to relate, for whom to feel empathy or even strong enough to really leave an impression. They are ghosts haunting life and making it unlivable. Even the all too vivid descriptions of sex seem more like unhappy, joyless incidents in which the characters perform sex, neither for love nor pleasure, but just to do it.
Overall, I felt like the entire collection was written by someone who has been on anti-depressants her whole life and really needed to up her dose; they aren't working.… (plus d'informations)