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A review of You Are Not a Stranger Here

by Adam Haslett

A dazzling debut collection of heart-wrenching short stories.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Santiago
About Jennifer Santiago

You Are Not a Stranger Here "You Are Not a Stranger Here" was precipitated by the publication of the widely acclaimed story "Notes to My Biographer," which leads off the collection here in Haslett's debut book. In this piece, an elderly inventor pays one last visit to his troubled gay son, Graham. While Graham alternates between mortification at his father's behavior and a primal desire for his father's love and approval, his father desperately tries to convince Graham of the merits of his latest invention, a bicycle with a self-charging battery. Even as the father hallucinates a restaurant full of Robert Wagners and eavesdropping nefarious bike executives, he is refreshingly lucid and deliciously irreverent. The emotionally exhausting father-son dynamic and the failing mental health of a once-grand man are reminiscent of Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections," and the writing is just as sharp.

"The Good Doctor" follows a young MD trying to save the inhabitants of a collapsing mid-Western town as he visits a depressed young mother. Even as she recounts her son's addition to methamphetamine, his attack on her that cost her four fingers of her right hand, and her son's subsequent death, she discusses art and classical music with the doctor and strives to make him feel comfortable in her home.

"The Beginnings of Grief" explores the disturbing relationship between a teenaged boy dealing with the aftermath of his mother's suicide and the school bully, who repeatedly beats and degrades him, a bizarre arrangement from which they both derive pleasure and humiliation.

"Devotion" tells of a brother and sister, their lives ruined by dark secrets and a mutual love for the same man.

Although the stories get no brighter- mental illness, depression, grief, disappointment, physical infirmity and death are the prevalent themes- the situations and characters are so raw and honest and the writing so outstanding that it is worth wading though the melancholy. All nine stories in this collection are brilliant, with "Reunion" and "Divination" being notable and chilling stand-outs.

"You Are Not a Stranger Here" is a powerful collection of stories by a promising (albeit morbidly depressed) author, and a must-read for fans of short stories and literary novels alike.

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: You Are Not a Stranger Here

Copyright © by Jennifer Santiago, 2002

Reviewed by Jennifer Santiago:
-- The Lovely Bones - by Alice Sebold
-- 30 Minute Meals - by Rachael Ray
-- Raising Blaze - by Debra Ginsberg
-- Backpack - by Emily Barr
-- You Are Not a Stranger Here - by Adam Haslett
-- Bookends - by Jane Green
-- A Confederacy of Dunces - by John Kennedy Toole
-- Ash Wednesday - by Ethan Hawke
-- All Saints' Day - by Brent Benoit
-- The Stepford Wives - by Ira Levin
-- The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating - by David M. Buss
-- Literary New Orleans - by Judy Long (Editor)
-- The Sopranos Family Cookbook - by Allen Rucker; Recipes by Michele Scicolone
-- Atonement - by Ian McEwan
-- The Crimson Petal and the White - by Michel Faber
-- Midnight Bayou - by Nora Roberts
-- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - by Ann Brashares
-- The Zygote Chronicles - by Suzanne Finnamore
-- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - by J.K. Rowling









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