March 1, 2023
The Pulitzer Prize--winning Millhauser's Disruptions reveals the unsettling oddness within the everyday, as a woman drinks alone in her well-appointed home and a caller is drawn into heartfelt meditations by a prerecorded customer service message. Prepub Alert.
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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
June 26, 2023
Millhauser’s accomplished collection (after Voices in the Night) is a mélange of fantastical imaginings and scenes of domestic oddness. In “The Summer of Ladders,” one of several stories that grapple with suburban groupthink, Millhauser exhibits a Cheeveresque curiosity about—and a fun house distortion of—a small town’s placid facade (“This efflorescence of ladders was probably no more than one of those common accidents of town life, like the sudden appearance of basketball nets on all the garages of a random stretch of block,” the narrator tells himself, before recognizing with a hint of ominousness that “the ladders were growing taller”). “The Column Dwellers of Our Town” features a community full of modern-day stylites—people who chose a solitary life of asceticism atop a column, not unlike the Christian saints of late antiquity. Millhauser excels at scenes of strange encounters, as in “One Summer Night,” about a 16-year-old boy who unexpectedly spends an evening with his girlfriend’s mother—who tells him she’s in a “moon mood” and asks to be pushed on a swing. The fabulist efforts also pay off, as in “The Little People,” where normal-sized humans coexist with a group of much smaller counterparts. This will please Millhauser’s longtime fans and earn him new admirers.
July 1, 2023
A man loves a woman who will only let him see the back of her head. An entire town sleeps for three days. Another town is known for its high columns, atop which individuals live in solitude. Millhauser shows his mastery for the short story in a collection that consistently addresses the absurdity of modern American life, in particular, the fads that are "more than a mere inclination to imitate one's neighbor." Disruptions teems with absurd trends, from one town where lawns are replaced with stylish tiles to another where everyone erects a ladder to the sky. Each narrator delivers these oddities with a matter-of-fact yet menacing tone, and each finely detailed world comes to life, as do the recurring themes of envy, guilt, and restlessness. Stories exploring these emotions in adolescence particularly shine. A teenage boy feels an inescapable urge to fight, a girl is chased in the street as puberty sets in, and a young Kafka cannot read social cues in 1959 America. Confounded by insecurities and far-off dreams, these characters, like Millhauser's bizarre worlds, feel fascinatingly real.
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Starred review from July 15, 2023
More turmoil and magic in suburbia from one of America's most accomplished short story writers. The latest collection from Millhauser revisits some of his favorite subjects. There are pivot points in adolescence: "One Summer Night" turns on a young man's seduction by his girlfriend's mother; "The Fight" sketches a conflict among boys; and "The Change" follows the anxious thoughts of a 15-year-old girl walking home at night. There are satires: "Thank You for Your Patience" darkly spoofs phone-hold platitudes, while "He Takes, She Takes" does the same for breakup patter. But most of the stories, and by far the strongest ones, explore community norms, stretching and mocking them to better expose their limits. "After the Beheading," with echoes of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," is set in a town that's implemented a guillotine with some troubling aftereffects. "The Little People" imagines humans cohabiting with Lilliputian neighbors, while in "The Summer of Ladders," a community's efforts at roof repair begin stretching toward the clouds. In "Green," a neighborhood goes all-in on xeriscaping, eradicating its trees and plants; in "Theater of Shadows," a town strives to become as black as possible. ("Babies wore soft black diapers. People blew their noses into black tissues.") Each of these stories is open to interpretation as a study of prejudice, suburban narrowness, and groupthink. But Millhauser has always been too slippery a writer to pursue such obvious meaning-making; more often, the effect is that of Borges-ian strangeness and delight. That's especially on display in one of the longest stories, "Kafka in High School, 1959," which poignantly imagines the bleak-hearted author in spit-shined Eisenhower America, and "Late," a comic riff on a late-arriving dinner date. Millhauser remains gifted at stretching time, space, and expectations.
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Starred review from December 22, 2023
In his latest collection, Pulitzer Prize winner Millhauser (Voices in the Night) offers well-paced, distinctively written stories that cast suburbia in an eerie, sometimes twisted light. A woman drinks alone in her well-appointed home, a caller is drawn into heartfelt meditations by a prerecorded customer service message, and a teenage boy spends a disturbing evening with his girlfriend's mother. More alarmingly, a narrator talks casually of beheadings meant to counter the break-ins and robberies that have disturbed a once-quiet town, and a tour guide calmly relates a creepy story reminiscent of the Pied Piper. Throughout, there's a beautiful consistency of language and voice, yet each story is distinctive. VERDICT Another winner from an expert in short fiction and well-crafted disquiet.--Barbara Hoffert
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