19 - How To Breathe Underwater, by Julie Orringer, 222 pages, Random House Vintage Books, 2003
WHY I PICKED IT: Recommended by Nick Hornby
ELAPSED TIME: 1 Day
RATING: Good
This collection of 9 short stories was difficult to read. Stories of kids being bullied, and how (typically fail to) they handle it. Hornby, in his book The Polysyllabic Spree, writes how sometimes great books aren't appreciated because he isn't always a great reader... and I wonder if that happened here. This book is well written, with characters who are flawed but who you want to root for - in success and in failure.
Orringer forgets one thing in her short stories - that when reading fiction, most people want to be offered some semblance of hope. In most of the stories, this is lacking. The biggest exception is The Isabel Fish, Maddy learns how to scuba dive to mend her family after a terrible accident. That this story, or What We Save aren't the final story of the book is indicative of this point... leaving us with somber thoughts rather than feeling satisfied with what these stories offered.
This blog is a simple review of every book that I read... For all books I’ll tell you why I picked it, how long it took me to read it, and give it a rating (burn it, not good, meh, good, very good, and required reading). I ask (encourage?) all readers of my blog to post their thoughts of any of the books in my comments :). Thanks!
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