My rating: 3.5 stars
When it comes to fiction books, I tend to prefer novels
over short story collections, as I like being able to spend a good amount of
time getting to know a character(s) and immersing myself into their
story. With short stories, especially ones that feature different
characters in each story, this becomes a bit of a challenge – it usually takes
a bit more effort and concentration on my part to really get into the stories
and hopefully connect with the characters.
While I would say that overall, I liked almost all of the stories in
James McBride’s latest short story collection Five-Carat Soul, there
were a few that really stood out to me and that I enjoyed reading more than
others. My favorites were definitely the
first story about the railroad box car set as well as the series of stories
about the Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band.
The author James McBride is a wonderful storyteller and
obviously one with heart as well. All of
the stories in this collection explored different facets of the human condition
in a way that was both fascinating and poignant, with well-timed doses of humor
throughout (where appropriate of course).
Some of the stories were also fun and imaginative, such as the one where
the main characters are zoo animals, with the story narrated primarily by a
lion (McBride stated in his Author’s Note that he wrote this particular story
after taking his nephews on a trip to the zoo).
There was also a pretty significant historical aspect to the stories, as
several of them revolve around important figures and/or events from American
history, such as the Civil War and General Robert E Lee, Abraham Lincoln and
his famous Emancipation Proclamation, World War II military history, etc. -- some
of the stories were also spiritual in nature while others were more
philosophical and metaphorical. For me
though, I enjoyed the “historical” stories the most, as I’m somewhat of a
history buff for one, and two, I wasn’t really in the mood for anything too
deep or too philosophical at the moment, as I already had a few things going on
in my personal life that over-exerted my brain power a bit too much, so in a
way, I resented a little having to ponder too deeply with some of the
stories. Perhaps if I re-read these
stories later on during a different period of my life, I may be able to connect
with them a little better.
One of the things that sets McBride’s stories apart from
other short story collections is his brilliant use of different, distinctive
voices for each story. I’ve read short
story collections in the past where it was often difficult to distinguish the
narrative voice from one story to another and at times, it caused confusion for
me. With McBride’s stories, this was
never an issue because each of his narrators had a voice that was uniquely
their own; not only that -- the writing style was also very different from one
story to another, to the point that, at times, it was easy to forget that each
story was written by the same author.
The one issue I had with this book was that some of the
stories ended a bit too abruptly, sometimes right in the middle of a
significant thought or idea, it seemed, and so it gave me the feeling that the
stories were incomplete or that there was perhaps something I missed. There were a few times where I turned the
page expecting to read more but instead it cut to the next story already, which
left me feeling a little jilted – not to mention the slight effort in having to
shift gears mentally after realizing I would be reading a completely different
story.
Overall, I liked this short story collection well enough,
but didn’t “love” it like I thought I would.
Again, it could just be me though, since there are quite a few 4 and 5
star reviews for this collection from other readers, so I suggest checking
those out as well. Despite my rating, I
would still recommend this collection of stories for its varied and interesting
take on different societal issues as well as human behavior.
Received advance
reader’s copy from Riverhead Books (Penguin Publishing Group) via Edelweiss
No comments:
Post a Comment