Soft Maniacs: Stories: Amazon.ca: Books

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First Sentence
When my wife dumped me, I quit my job at the box factory, left Cleveland, and wandered for a few months. Read the first page

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Concordance

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

4.0 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)

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Most helpful customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Modern Short fiction revived?, Sep 9 2002

By

Daniel W. Noonan (Danbury, Connecticut USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Soft Maniacs: Stories (Hardcover)

Short fiction is hard to come by these days, But estep comes into the scene in full force. I am not sure how good her novels are, but her short works hold quite a few gems.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Not genius but a good read, Mar 19 2002

By

dylan555 "dylan555" (Hillsborough, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soft Maniacs: Stories (Hardcover)

Ms. Estep has created an interesting, fast paced world here in her book Soft Maniacs. The books is well written, funny, sad, and at times a bit disturbing. I found it to be very similar to David Schickler's, "Kissing in Manhattan." The main difference is that the sexual deviance in this book seems to be a little more realistic and plausable.

The arc of stories follows a handful of characters and how their lives intertwine. For the most part the stories, while out there, were really good. My one problem with the book is that the characterization is a bit weak at times. The author is so driven by making these characters and plots meet at weird places and then bounce back into space that we're left with only a few real, three dimensional people. (The horse attendant with the bad back for example). At times the narrators seem to be capable of great introspection and insight, however the choices they have made in their lives contradict this intelligence.

I would say you should read this, its quick, fun, funny, and interesting. Not a great literary work, but not trash either.

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1.0 out of 5 stars False Maniacs, Mar 16 2002

By

"no17589" (New Orleans) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soft Maniacs: Stories (Hardcover)

(My actual "Rating" would be "No Star", but the option doesn't exist in Amazon's form)

It's evident from the numbers of happy camper-readers
that this book describes for the suburban mall crowd the desperately colorful life of urban bohemians and artist wannabes.

By now, it's a tired strategy, the so-called book of "interlocking stories." When you read this description, read
"couldn't make a novel out of it, and the publisher wanted to be able to make money off republishing the stories."

The lady sure works hard at her prose. It shows, as it is
exhausting to read after a while. The interlocking stories are repetitive in their use of pseudo-tough tropes--but the kids will like that and feel real tough reading them in their dorm rooms. The titillation is really on the high-school gross-out level, with a bit of the required lesbian-voyeur-topless-dancing-ex-amateur-hooker thrown in. But no more so than you get on MTV Real World or a Saturday Night Live/Comedy Central Sketch.

So, though here and there these stories mock the middle-brow, they perfectly embody it. This work is just the "bohemian" brand of fake literature that's been spewing out of publishing houses (like "The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing") lately.

But the kids are buying it.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Waxing Circus-like
Soft Maniacs was difficult to get into, however personally, it didn't take me too long to adjust; it was real without being real. Read more

Published on Oct 22 2000 by Fugue Satori

5.0 out of 5 stars Maggie Does it Again!
Maggie fans will not be let down by her latest book, "Soft Maniacs." It is a collection of short stories with characters that cross over from story to story. Read more