What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us Book

These stories have within them what I love--A struggling actress as a Bigfoot impersonator! A guy who quits his life to look for the Loch Ness Monster!--but I was left a bit unmoved at the end of them most of the time. I would have loved to cut ten-to-fifteen pages from each of these, trimming down the constant descriptive language and reforming it into fewer lines that are more concise and clever, making the revelations less soft, having the characters make harder left turns every once in awhile.

The writing itself is technically proficient, and van den Berg has her style down solid--no surprise for someone whose stories are propelled by science. That form isn't necessarily a bad thing, but after the third or fourth 25-page story about academic pursuits mixing (kind of, but not really) dangerously with abandonment/distance/uncertainty, I felt like I was reading the formula instead of the results. Nothing wrong with that--how many Amy Hempel stories are just her talking at a dog, for shit's sake--I just wanted her to lean harder into the odd parts instead of the doldrums the odd parts bounce against.

One thing I'll never forget is the part in the story where the woman steals the giant mask at the shop she works in. Her holding it as she gets mugged is a powerful image, and what I would have liked to see more of in the stories: an action with a consequence, an unexpected risk that makes total sense.

These are fine stories from a talented writer, and I'd be interested in reading more, but this book seems like a promise to make good on.