Self-Help
Lorrie Moore
Plume
1985
Ms. Hen has read a few Lorrie Moore books previously, and
she has enjoyed them, so when she was at her favorite library branch, and she
saw this for sale for 50 cents, she scooped it up. She has bought books before
at the library, which might seem counterintuitive, but she likes to have books
around her, and she also can’t pass up a bargain.
Ms. Hen likes Lorrie Moore’s short stories because she
usually says things in a way that nobody else does, but Ms. Hen thought this
collection stung in places. She felt this way because all the stories show
people and their shortcomings, and how they deal with them. She shows how
people make mistakes, and have negative stuff thrust into their lives.
One of Ms. Hen’s favorite stories in this book is “Go Like
This,” which is about a woman dealing with cancer and her impending death. Ms.
Hen liked this because she thinks it’s realistic, but funny at the same time.
The character invites her friends over to tell them she is going to kill
herself, and she gets different, quirky reactions from everyone in the room.
She thinks one woman is after her husband, and can’t wait for her to die. Ms.
Hen understands why the character would want to take her own life, and die a
dignified death, but she thinks it could be bad karma. The idea of withering
away to some people is unbearable, but there is a chance that a person might
not die of cancer if they have it. It’s difficult to make a story about cancer
and suicide funny, but Ms. Moore succeeds in doing that.
Ms. Hen wondered why this collection is entitled SELF-HELP,
and she thinks it might be because all the stories are supposed to teach the
readers a life lesson that they might not learn elsewhere. A lot of people don’t
like to read self-help books, because they are preachy and condescending, and
Ms. Hen thinks that, too, but reading a collection of stories to learn lessons
on how not to live can help us as well. We can learn from our own mistakes and
also other’s, and we can absorb from reading fiction how people can have
messed up lives, too.
Ms. Hen liked this book, but she didn’t think it’s Moore’s
best. She has read other collections by her that made her think more, and say
hmm more. She likes it when an author makes her say hmm, because it makes her
think that yes, this is true, why didn’t I think of it myself? This collection
is mostly sad, which is fine with Ms. Hen because she likes sad books, but it’s
an ordinary sad, not extraordinary.
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