Review: The Simplest of Acts by Melanie Haney

Book Info:
The Simplest of Acts: And Other Stories by Melanie Haney

Paperback: 102 pages
Publisher: Lulu.com (January 10, 2009)
ISBN-13: 9780557035908

Genre: Short Stories

Rating: 3.5/5

Melanie Haney's debut collection of short stories captures rare glimpses into the beauty and strangeness of ordinary life.

This collection includes her award winning stories, "The Simplest of Acts" and "Only in Bellington" among other carefully wrought tales of loss and love and the small - perhaps overlooked - moments of catharsis in our ordinary lives.

I've read a lot of short stories this year, and I've realized that it's a format I really enjoy. I have a lot of respect for authors that can make readers feel a connection with characters in such a short amount of pages.

Ms Haney's story collection is slim at 102 pages, but it packs an emotional punch in those pages. The stories range in length from about 2 pages to 18 pages. The 2 page story didn't really stick with me as it really wasn't enough time for the characters to make an impression, but my 2 favorite stories were 4 and 6 pages.

All of the stories deal with a loss of someone close to you. In some stories it's the loss of a parent, in others the loss of a child. The stories aren't depressing though. Instead they focus on the simple things that bring comfort in hard times.

A couple of my favorite stories were "An Ordinary Evening", "Sweltering" and "The Simplest of Acts". "An Ordinary Evening" is the story of a mother keeping vigil over her dying daughter in the hospital. "Sweltering" is the story of a cat who makes an appearance in a young couple's life and what he means to them. "The Simplest of Acts" is about losing your mother and the loss of all of the traditions that were uniquely hers. This collection of stories is an emotionally satisfying read, and some of the stories have really stuck with me. 3.5 stars

Other Reviews:

Bibliophile by the Sea

Bookopolis

Peeking Between the Pages

Review: Delicate Edible Birds

From Lauren Groff, author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling first novel The Monsters of Templeton, comes Delicate Edible Birds, one of the most striking short fiction debuts in years. Here are nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a twentieth-century American woman.

In "Sir Fleeting," a midwestern farm girl on her honeymoon in Argentina falls into lifelong lust for a French playboy. In "Blythe," an attorney who has become a stay-at-home mother takes a night class in poetry and meets another full-time mother, one whose charismatic brilliance changes everything. In "Delicate Edible Birds," a group of war correspondents - a lone, high-spirited woman among them - falls prey to a brutal farmer while fleeing Nazis in the French countryside.

In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime - or several lifetimes.

For some people a catchy title will stand out to them, for me it's the cover that catches my eye. I love this cover and the way the black scroll work stands out against the light blue. This book was already on my must read list because I really enjoyed Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton, but if it hadn't been, I would have checked it out just based on the cover.

The first story in the book is set in Templeton. I loved this because it was like going home, back to a familiar, comfortable setting. From here, the stories all feature women, but they are all vastly different. This difference in all the stories was one of my favorite aspects of this collection. Often times with short stories it seems like you are reading variations on the same story over and over. I never felt that way with this collection.

There were a couple of times that the voice the story was told in seemed a little strange, a little off. By the end of the story, though, I always understood exactly why Groff told the story the way she did, and it always made perfect sense.

Groff's writing is beautiful and captivating without being overdone. I would often set the book aside after completing a story just to keep the characters with me a little while longer. Lauren
Groff has definitely made her way on to my "must read" list. 4.5 stars

Special thanks to Hyperion Books for providing my review copy.

Order Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories