Reviews for Other People's Lives

The average rating for Other People's Lives based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-11 00:00:00 Jan Roczniak This collection of stories was originally published in 1976 and won the Jewish Book Award that year as well as being nominated for the National Book Award, but it is not an easy read. It has been re-issued through Open Road Media. The title story is especially difficult because the protagonist is so strange and disassociated, that the readers feel distant. Just recently released from a psychiatric institution, she rents a room with the immigrant family of a dying ballet dancer. Her problem (or at least one of them) is that she gets sucked into the lives of others around her so completely that she forgets about her own life. So the story works to make the reader experience being sucked into strangers' lives--a strange and disorienting trip. Three of the later stories won me over, one about fantasies or dreams experienced by a young girl home sick with the measles, one about a girl at camp being cast as the lead in play about the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto just because she speaks Yiddish, and the last about baby-sitting for a famous poet. They are all whimsical and strange, perhaps even strained, but one can empathize with as well as witness their main characters. Over all, this collection of short stories is both interesting and challenging, if perhaps a bit over-written.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-26 00:00:00 John Webb I wanted to finish this but like other readers, I also thought the book dragged on and on pointlessly. It wasn't the dialogue so much, but rather the disjointed thoughts with no real story. I finally just had to give up.