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Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever Stories Justin Taylor 9780061881817 Books

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Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever Stories Justin Taylor 9780061881817 Books

I'm becoming more and more a fan of short story collections than ever before. It's funny--what I used to find most problematic about short stories, the fact that I would get invested in characters only to have to give them up within a few pages, I'm starting to enjoy more and more. A good short story collection really gives you insight into many memorable characters and situations, and while there are certain stories you wish to be longer, the collection is often like a buffet--sometimes there will be things you really like and other times you hope the stories will pass quickly.

Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever definitely upheld the buffet notion for me. Justin Taylor is a young writer with tremendous, tremendous promise. There are some absolutely fantastic stories in this collection, which features mostly twenty-somethings as main characters. As you might imagine, some of the stories touch on disillusionment, dysfunction and a general lack of motivation, but many of these stories are beautifully written. Some of my favorites include Tennessee, a story of family dysfunction and the need for belonging; The New Life, in which a teenager turns to the supernatural to try and keep his crush from slipping away; What Was Once All Yours, which combines religion and typical high school behavior with fantastic results; and In My Heart I Am Already Gone, in which a fairly rudderless guy is offered money from his uncle to kill their sick cat. I like that Taylor isn't afraid to draw his characters as complex, flawed individuals. Not all of Taylor's stories work; I am not a fan of really experimental fiction and a few of the stories follow that vein, but many stories are very brief, so it isn't too much of a challenge to muddle through.

If you enjoy short stories, I'd definitely recommend this collection. And I look forward to seeing what Justin Taylor accomplishes as his career progresses!


Tags : Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever: Stories [Justin Taylor] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Justin Taylor's crystalline, spare, and oddly moving prose cuts to the quick. His characters are guided by misapprehensions that bring them to hilarious but often tragic impasses with reality: a high school boy's desire to win over a crush leads him to experiment with black magic,Justin Taylor,Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever: Stories,Harper Perennial,0061881813,Short Stories (single author),Short stories.,American Novel And Short Story,FICTION General,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Short Stories (single author),General,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Short stories

Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever Stories Justin Taylor 9780061881817 Books Reviews

of impeccable writing and charmingly earnest characters. These stories are incredibly well-crafted and easy to love -- in fact, impossible not to love. After the first reading I knew there were going to be many more; this is one of those books you keep forever and return to often. I've already lent my copy to numerous friends and bought several more.
I am not a quitter, therefore, finished this book though somewhere around Chapter 4 became highly uninterested in the material.

I was unable to connect to any characters on a personal level, not because I didn't relate to then, but because Taylor lacks the ability to develop characters on a more intimate level.

This is a book about 14 of the most boring people of the face of the planet- even though a few of them are supposedly tripping balls.
Justin Taylor's collection of short stories is a vivid debut for the young New York based writer and editor. I had this book on my desk for months, and I think maybe its Raymond Carveresque title allowed it to slip to the bottom of the pile, for how many times have we read books with whole sentences for their titles, and how often have they been disappointments. (Offhand I can't think of a good one since Malone Dies, and even that would have been better with another title.) But finally I got to the bottom of the stack and started this one with trepidation, well not so much actual fear, since several writers I respect have gone to bat for the author, and so it proved. Taylor is exceedingly talented and his mind is a profligate one, and some of the stories in the collection are so good I wish I had written them myself.

His strengths are several. There's the ear for dialogue that, even when it's not "realistic" per se, has a vitality and friskiness that makes the reader want to know more about the speakers. There's a sense of place, often in NYC or Florida settings, that's palpable, that becomes, as they say in MFA workshops, almost another character in the story, There's an erotic component to his fiction, which is great, he's not afraid of sex as so many young writers seem to be today. And as I say, his imagination seems to know now bounds he wants to try out new things all the time. The stories are brief, leave you wanting more which is a good thing, for it's the longer stories, for the most part, that are the most problematic, and thus they're like the weather here in San Francisco or the buses in London, if you don't like the one you're in, get out and there'll be another in a few minutes. Some of the stories here just knocked me out with their invention, flair, and emotional resonance. He cares about his characters, even the dumbest and most venal, and even if few of them wind up happier or wiser, they have been molded and zapped into life with a feeling I can safely compare to love.

"In My Heart I Am Already Gone" is the story of a bright boy who lets his interest in a young cousin get the upper hand, even while he accepts a commission from her father to kill her pet cat. I know, I was all upset about having to read a story in which a cat gets killed, but it seems almost that the psychic karma of narrative steps in and applies justice all around. Heartbreak too. "The New Life" involves some Charles Burns-esque teens, largely losers, two of whom break free and swim into the upper reaches of middle school popularity, leaving their friends to wallow in envy. "Tennessee" is a little bit like Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg," and I learned many Jewish expressions and ways of arguing from it.

A few stories feel more like mood pieces written to attempt a prose poem vibe and a few are honorable flops. Some of the stories are linked up in complicated ways, including a couple of unsatisfactory passes at an anarchist commune run by a vixen that would be an ideal part for Michelle Rodriguez. I wondered also at the bisexual motif running through the book it comes from a murky place in these guys' lives to surface at inappropriate times, exactly the way alcoholism used to steer Richard Yates' stories of promising junior execs ruining themselves at the office Christmas party by taking that one drink too many. And yet after reading the whole collection I have to tell you, there's no fiction writer I know with more promise, and more daring, than Justin Taylor right at this minute.
Although Justin may have been able to write lucidly about a variety of his experiences, they are all meaningless unless you are of a demographic where everything that happened to you as a teenager still seems like the saddest thing in the world when you are in your mid-twenties. I am disappointed because I didn't think the title was so sarcastic; I imagined strange stories of freaks and failures all brought into some sort of warm, forgiving light. Instead, I could leave the last 15 pages and never look back.
Justin Taylor rules. I read “Gospel of Anarchy” first and thirsted for more from this author. This i terweaved collection of shorts did the trick! Taylor has such and unique voice, tone, and bis characters make me want to get to know them and spend time in their minds
I'm becoming more and more a fan of short story collections than ever before. It's funny--what I used to find most problematic about short stories, the fact that I would get invested in characters only to have to give them up within a few pages, I'm starting to enjoy more and more. A good short story collection really gives you insight into many memorable characters and situations, and while there are certain stories you wish to be longer, the collection is often like a buffet--sometimes there will be things you really like and other times you hope the stories will pass quickly.

Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever definitely upheld the buffet notion for me. Justin Taylor is a young writer with tremendous, tremendous promise. There are some absolutely fantastic stories in this collection, which features mostly twenty-somethings as main characters. As you might imagine, some of the stories touch on disillusionment, dysfunction and a general lack of motivation, but many of these stories are beautifully written. Some of my favorites include Tennessee, a story of family dysfunction and the need for belonging; The New Life, in which a teenager turns to the supernatural to try and keep his crush from slipping away; What Was Once All Yours, which combines religion and typical high school behavior with fantastic results; and In My Heart I Am Already Gone, in which a fairly rudderless guy is offered money from his uncle to kill their sick cat. I like that Taylor isn't afraid to draw his characters as complex, flawed individuals. Not all of Taylor's stories work; I am not a fan of really experimental fiction and a few of the stories follow that vein, but many stories are very brief, so it isn't too much of a challenge to muddle through.

If you enjoy short stories, I'd definitely recommend this collection. And I look forward to seeing what Justin Taylor accomplishes as his career progresses!