The Bigness of the World: Stories (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, #70)

by Lori Ostlund

In Lori Ostlund's debut collection, people seeking escape from situations at home venture out into a world that they find is just as complicated and troubled as the one they left behind. In prose highlighted by both satire and poignant observation, Ostlund offers characters that represent a different sort of everyman - men and women who poke fun at ideological rigidity while holding fast to good grammar and manners, people seeking connections in a world that seems increasingly foreign. In ""Upon Completion of Baldness"" a young woman shaves her head for a part in a movie in Hong Kong that will help her escape life with her lover in Albuquerque. The precocious narrator of ""All Boy"" finds comfort when he is locked in a closet by a babysitter. In ""Dr. Deneau's Punishment"" a math teacher leaving New York for Minnesota as a means of punishing himself engages in an unsettling method of discipline. A lesbian couple whose relationship is disintegrating flees to the Moroccan desert in ""The Children Beneath the Seat."" And in ""Idyllic Little Bali"" a group of Americans gather around a pool in Java to discuss their brushes with fame and end up witnessing a man's fatal flight from his wife. In the eleven stories in ""The Bigness of the World"" we see that wherever you are in the world, where you came from is never far away.

• ISBN10: 1501117882
• ISBN13: 9781501117886
• Publish Date: 22 September 2015 (first published 1 January 2009)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[Lianne]

I was approved an ARC of this book by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This review in its entirety was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2016/02/08/review-the-bigness-of-the-world/

The Bigness of the World was an interesting collection of stories capturing those fleeting moments of life. It’s hard to explain, many of these stories may not seem out of the ordinary or may happen to anyone at one point or another within a person’s week, and some of these stories may not seem to have a particular end goal in mind, but the reader is swept along following the characters’ experiences: moments of revelation, of things falling apart, of uncertainty or confusion. It’s interesting, and the author did a wonderful job in really capturing these characters’ experiences, whether the protagonist is young or old, man or woman.

Like any short story collection, there’s going to stories that you either like or you don’t. This collection kept my interest enough, but I would have to say my favourites were “The Bigness of the World” (I felt for the young characters and that gap between what’s going on amongst the adults and how they understand everything that’s happening to them), “Bed Death” (interesting in the way the relationship drifted apart without the narrator really realising it), “Talking Fowl With My Father” (a very odd tale–the father was quite an eccentric character–but I couldn’t help but follow along), “Upon Completion of Baldness” (similar to “Bed Death” only the narrator was focusing much on the baldness of her girlfriend as a sort of anchor to her thoughts and the things in their lives that were spiraling out of control without her realising it), and “All Boy” (aww, Harold).

The Bigness of the World overall was an interesting read and impressive collection. The author had a wonderful way of capturing the ebbs of everyday life and really relling a story out of them, whether they be about relationships falling apart or misconceptions about what’s going on around these characters. I would recommend this book to readers of contemporary fiction and readers looking to diversify their readings/books with LGBQT elements.

Rating: 3.5/5