Book Review: Minor Robberies

Book #69

“All this is fine, she supposes, except she trembles to think of the self coming next, the self she might evolve into despite her protestations.” — Deb Olin Unferth, Minor Robberies

Of the three short story collections in One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box, this is the most successful. While the other two, How The Water Feels to the Fishes and Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape are both strong works by writers I admire or love, the snatches of genius between mundane or just slightly above average writers frustrated me. Knowing they had that kind of talent and didn’t stick it into every single sentence made me want to discount the books altogether. I had almost snapped into my editor mode, wanting to go back to the writers and tell them to get it together and show how remarkable they are.

With Deb Olin Unferth you don’t feel that. I’m not saying every story was a home run, but I didn’t feel she was preforming below her talent (which is considerable). Her writing feels effortless and is beautiful. She deals with such a range of human emotion, especially uncertainty, insecurity and love, with such precision you can’t help but say, yes! YES! At times I felt she wrote like I wish more people would write.

The short of the long is I really enjoyed the collection, and it’s definitely gotten me pumped for Olin’s Vacation, which is already sitting on my shelves.