Someday This Will Be Funny

Starred review from March 21, 2011
Tillman's gorgeous and potent latest (after American Genius) finds the innovative author embracing diverse, imaginative forms in these often brief but always intriguing tales. "Give Us Some Dirt" is a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that, in scarcely four pages, plays skillfully on multiple meanings of "dirt" and raises provocative questions about race. Feeling more like an essay than a story, "Love Sentence" considers the role of words as vehicles of intense emotions, particularly in the digital age. With subjects ranging from birds to Marvin Gaye to an ex-lover who has earned Tillman's wrath, these missives partake in an elegant, efficient use of language to challenge concepts of love, history, memory, and language. Tillman's compact narratives shine and stand up to multiple readings.

May 15, 2011

The 22 pieces by Tillman (American Genius) collected here vary wildly in length, complexity, and focus, pondering such topics as the color chartreuse, the moon, the behavior of mourning doves, and the difficulties of writing about love. Some of the stories take on the perspective of famous people: "Give Us Some Dirt" manages to serve up sympathy for Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings; "Later"--an elegiac piece about two music icons who died too soon--features a conversation between John Lennon and Marvin Gaye in which they sing each other's songs. The most traditional stories are about male-female relationships: in "The Substitute," a woman overanalyzes her budding romance, while in "Playing Hurt," a smart woman makes a bad marriage choice. The funniest stories are "A Simple Idea," which involves paranoia stemming from unpaid parking tickets, and "More Sex," in which a woman ruminates on how men can possibly think of sex every seven minutes, as one statistic suggests. VERDICT Tillman's stories, though not always engrossing, are consistently illuminating; best suited for serious, patient readers who are dedicated to wrangling with ideas. Fans of Donald Barthelme and William Gass will also appreciate. [This is part of Red Lemonade's debut list. More information at rnash.com.--Ed.]--Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical Coll., Greenwood, SC

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2011
We humans are the narrating animal, a fact of infinite implication that Tillman explores with wit and sagacity in her new, uncanny short-story collection. An adventurous and artistic fiction writer (American Genius, 2006) and essayist, Tillman mesmerizes us with sly characters busy assessing perplexing predicaments, luring our awareness away from language. Yet somehow she also draws our attention to the glimmering power of words as her reflective and drolly funny narrators tell their surprising, many-layered tales. One is fascinated by a pair of nesting mourning doves. Another, in a wickedly funny take on the irony of psychotherapy, declares that her imagination was her best feature. Tillman celebrates ambivalence and marriage in Chartreuse and dissects inheritance in But Theres a Family Resemblance. She portrays with unique insight Clarence Thomas and Marvin Gaye in concentrated yet profoundly revealing tales, and in the rhapsodic and mischievous Love Sentence, she considers how we talk of love. Delectably intricate and incisive, comedic and empathic, Tillmans push-and-pull stories traverse the paradoxes of body and mind and beautifully affirm the necessity and largesse of stories.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)