≡ Libro Gratis The Unfinished World And Other Stories Amber Sparks 9781631490903 Books

The Unfinished World And Other Stories Amber Sparks 9781631490903 Books

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The Unfinished World And Other Stories Amber Sparks 9781631490903 Books

This collection of short stories is an inventive, wild ride: there are (among many, many others) time travelers, man-swallowing jungles, an appearance of Lancelot, and a man without a soul in a story punctuated by Irish faerie-tale tropes. While these are not the most emotionally rich stories in the world, Sparks imaginative gifts largely make up for any lack of tearjerkers. She is comfortable in many times (past, present, future); many geographies; many lengths (a few of these are scarcely a page long); many bodies (men, women, gay, straight). My favorite was her longer form, multi-paragraph telling of the man without a soul, but the death house architect was a troubling conceit - a sort of way station to house the rotting bodies of persons whose loved ones believed there was some chance they might still have a spark of life in them, the caretakers of which must be both proficient in first aid as well as wholly lacking in imagination, which would make them mad. There was also the time traveler intent on destroying the masterwork of a great artist. Despite repeated trips to the artist's age, she was only able to effect subtle changes on the great work. While I craved more of the longer pieces, there is no question Sparks' rich world promises much future fruit.


Tags : The Unfinished World: And Other Stories [Amber Sparks] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <strong>A highly anticipated collection of wildly imaginative short stories from “one of contemporary fiction’s true mad scientists” (<em>Necessary Fiction</em>).</strong> In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell,Amber Sparks,The Unfinished World: And Other Stories,Liveright,1631490907,Fantasy fiction,Fantasy fiction.,Short stories.,FICTION Short Stories (single author),Fiction,Fiction - General,Popular American Fiction,Short Stories (single author),Short stories

The Unfinished World And Other Stories Amber Sparks 9781631490903 Books Reviews

Not your "ho-hum oh this again" stories, but smart ones that surprise you, stretch you, and leave you stunned. I was enthralled by the author's unrelenting imagination and eccentric narratives when I read her first collection, MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES. THE UNFINISHED WORLD does not disappoint.
Daring and original. I tend to be quite critical of short story volumes because they are generally very uneven. Although there was one story in this book that I found completely bewildering, it is a rich and wonderful collection.
I purchased this book on a whim, because I liked the cover and the reading sample seemed interesting. Boy, am I glad that I did! This is a wonderful collection of short stories from a variety of genres and subjects, full of exotic locales and unusual characters. Read this if you're sick and tired of pretentious literary stories.
I have to love the inventiveness and strangeness in these stories. The real pull for me here goes beyond that though. The inventiveness is certainly there, and the strangeness, and darkly pulling characters and story all the while, but the most treasured aspect for me is the way the real world seems different when you break away from reading. The stories leave a mark and you just don't look at things quite the same when you're done, though you might not be able to say exactly what is different. I guess the marvels in the stories perhaps let the reader better perceive the marvels present around them. Maybe I'm not making any sense, but I loved these stories.
This is her second book of short stories, after 2012’s “May We Shed These Human Bodies” and 2013’s “Desert Places,” a haunting creation (and destruction) myth co-written with Robert Kloss.
The 19 stories in this collection deal in myth and make-believe, though Sparks’ brand of magical realism cannot be categorized as simple fantasy. No reader can deny her gift for lyricism when confronted with sentences like “We live in heaps of blight and scarce,” or “She was the kind of sickness a man would give anything to feel.” But in some stories, the balance between lyricism and narrative can give way. “And the World Was Crowded with Things that Meant Love” is little more than a catalog of gifts exchanged between a man and woman over the years, without any real sense of the characters’ personalities or struggles to ground five pages of “She sent maps made of clay, locks with no key, books with words cut out… They sent maps of where they’d been and circled where they were going.”
Perhaps Sparks’ most impressive trademark is her ability to mix seriousness and playfulness. In this book, fathers and daughters hunt werewolves together in orange vests, Sir Lancelot is brought back to life, and a witch tyrannizes a modern kingdom full of TVs and sorcery, airplanes and transfiguration. None of these stories is funny so much as poignantly absurd, simultaneously tragic and comic the way some kinds of madness are.
This collection will likely split readers along the standard magical realism divide some will be drawn in by the poetic descriptions and sense of whimsy, while other will be turned off by the meandering plots and dense prose. But anyone can count on being struck by the quality of Sparks’ writing and the teetering stakes of each plot.
I am not really a short story reader, as a rule, but I decided to pick up this volume because I am acquainted with the author and had heard great buzz about it.

If you want stories to entertain, make you think, and/or creep you out, this is the book for you. There is a story that continues to haunt me every time I think about this book or short stories still, and I finished reading this two or three months ago.

I often felt I would benefit from re-reading stories, to get another layer of understanding or a bit more depth out of it, which I think is a GOOD thing in a book, especially one you are going to purchase (I am over-practical and want to be able to re-use my books as well as other things). Just reading the book will facilitate enough learning and growth that you'll get something out of re-reading it either immediately or in the future.

I'd recommend checking this thing out if you have any inclination you'd be interested in a book of short stories. These mostly have some kind of sci-fi or mystical/fantasy aspect to them, while remaining extremely accessible to people who are not necessarily "into that stuff."

I wish Amber much success and hope you'll give this volume a try. (It's not a big giant book, either; you can easily slip it into a backpack, purse, or large pocket!!!)
This collection of short stories is an inventive, wild ride there are (among many, many others) time travelers, man-swallowing jungles, an appearance of Lancelot, and a man without a soul in a story punctuated by Irish faerie-tale tropes. While these are not the most emotionally rich stories in the world, Sparks imaginative gifts largely make up for any lack of tearjerkers. She is comfortable in many times (past, present, future); many geographies; many lengths (a few of these are scarcely a page long); many bodies (men, women, gay, straight). My favorite was her longer form, multi-paragraph telling of the man without a soul, but the death house architect was a troubling conceit - a sort of way station to house the rotting bodies of persons whose loved ones believed there was some chance they might still have a spark of life in them, the caretakers of which must be both proficient in first aid as well as wholly lacking in imagination, which would make them mad. There was also the time traveler intent on destroying the masterwork of a great artist. Despite repeated trips to the artist's age, she was only able to effect subtle changes on the great work. While I craved more of the longer pieces, there is no question Sparks' rich world promises much future fruit.