Review of by Jamie Quatro's “I Want To Show You More” Reviewed By Nina Schuyler April 29th, 2013
While a short story collection can be knitted together in a lot of different ways—character, theme, setting, subject matter or tone—how tightly it should be woven is less defined. Some collections are so knotted that all the life is wrung out of them. Others are so loose it feels as if the writer had to dig deep to fill up pages. In her debut collection, I Want to Show You More, Jamie Quatro has accomplished a rare paradox: the collection is stitched together and, yet, it’s loose and baggy, letting in a lot of surprise. Short shorts live next to long stories; surrealism is neighbors with realism. You can hear the murmurs of Flannery O’Connor, and also George Saunders, Lorrie Moore and Donald Barthelme. Thematic threads hold some of it together—God, transcendence, adultery, running, illness, and family. And in a few of the stories, we revisit some of the same characters. The stories are all set in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, which straddles Georgia and Tennessee. It’s a perfect metaphor for Quatro’s collection: bagginess and a tight weaving coexisting. It’s bound to frustrate some readers and delight others. But that’s one of the risks of taking a risk. more… http://therumpus.net/2013/04/i-want-to-show-you-more-by-jamie-quatro/ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
