This book is a slice of different life — unless you are living in Israel and are somewhat accustomed to news of suicide bombings, that is. It is also a quite recognizable slice of life if you’ve ever had a not-too-thrilling job, oddness in your family, a difficult relationship with a parent, or been at a loss trying to understand relationships.

Modan’s story is less dramatic than it seems from the cover images and the setup: there’s been a suicide bombing and someone’s father may be a victim. Most of what would be spectacle in the story happens not in the panels — the explosions aren’t in real time, the most common connections are missed connections — but is unseen. It’s a less dramatic unravelling of events: who women are to the young, taxi-driving Koby Franco; who they are/were to his father; how Koby fits in the pieces of past and present with his dad. The dailiness matters, which is probably why it isn’t as extreme as you suspect it will be. Day after day usually isn’t extreme, or it ceases to be extreme because it is ordinary.

Drawn & Quarterly did a great job, the matte pages work well with the color drawings, and it opens easily with no risk of losing bits of story in the gutter. (The book itself is the shape and size of hardcover novel.) The art is flat and simplified, but still realistic.

Surprisingly, I don’t have strong feelings about the book. It’s well done, it’s interesting, I liked it, but didn’t love it and can’t quite put my finger on why.

I am not a reader of self-helpy type books. I’m not trying to cast aspersions on folks who are, though it is true my desire to make it clear I’m not generally a fan of the genre does probably have something to do with the idea that anonymous people on the internet who stumble over this review thinking I might be that kind of reader makes me cringe. [Insert obvious joke about perhaps needing self-helpy books here.]

The other reason to make it clear is that this is not a self help book. Sylvia Boorstein is a Buddhist teacher, a psychotherapist, and Jewish grandmother. While she does seem more patient and calm than the average bear, she’s no saint. This makes me trust her. She says, in her introduction:

I also thought about how easily my mind forgets what it knows, how easily it falls into confusion and out of caring connection. So I decided to write this book–not about avoiding confusion, because we can’t–but about becoming unconfused and restoring connection because it really is the best way to live.

I believe her. Meaning, I recognize that sort of confusion in my own life, it seems common sense that you can’t avoid it, and I think she has more practice than I do “becoming unconfused”.

What she does in this book is share the lessons learned from her practice. In a relatable, non-preachy way, she uses the Buddhist teachings of Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness, and Wise Concentration (the middle steps of the Eightfold Path–and no, it doesn’t matter if you know what that is or not) as her framework. She tells stories about her friends, her husband, how she goes off track and gets back on again. I imagine she’d be a wonderful person to sit and share a cup of tea with on a rainy afternoon; her writing style makes her books feel like conversations.

If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to Buddhist principles and thought, this isn’t the right book. If, on the other hand, you are curious about Buddhist principles or what contemporary practice might look like, you’ll probably enjoy this. I don’t think you need to have an interest in Buddhism to get a lot out of this book, however. All you really need is an open mind, a willingness to listen, and perhaps a belief in the possibility of adjusting your attitude, because it is an inside job. Highly recommended.

I usually notice the category the publisher prints on a book. Usually it is straightforward or boring, such as the simple “fiction” or the ridiculous “fiction/literature”. As if we needed one more reason to think the folks at Small Beer Press were fantastic, this book’s categorization is “short stories/plausible fabulism”.

If you have doubts about plausible fabulism, perhaps “Biographical Notes to ‘A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes’ by Benjamin Rosenbaum” (the fourth story in the book) will answer them. You’ll learn more about gumballs, VC money, and video games in real life before you get there — and that is in just the first story. Then come the grandmothers and giants, and a self-sacrificing orange ruling the world; then the plausible fabulist.

There are thirteen more stories, with a tiger, a virus subverting utopia, and great battles in “The House Beyond Your Sky” and “A Siege of Cranes” among the strangeness. Reading them, I never knew what would happen or even what sort of story the next one would be. I loved that. Rosenbaum writes stories that manage to be both technicolor weird and yank at those places inside you that make your throat do that swallowy I’m going to cry thing. Highly recommended.

by J. Robert Lennon
ISBN: 9781555975234

These extremely short pieces read like overheard stories, or feel like they could just as easily start with “did you hear about the guy who…” They are easy reads, and though some might have a bit of a sting or offer something deeper that stays, mostly the effect is like eating potato chips absent-mindedly out of the bag: you eat more than you think you will because they’re tasty and it’s easy to keep going.

Lennon grouped his stories into themes (town and country, mystery and confusion, lies and blame, work and money, parents and children, artists and professors, doom and madness) which makes them sound heavier and more profound than they are, I think. Not a bad idea, just these are comfortable bits, dispassionately told, in a rhythm that won’t stop you in your tracks or make your heart beat too fast. They don’t offer brilliant insights or perfect phrases that will vibrate in your head, but are curiously enjoyable just the same.

Apparently Lennon worked on these stories during long walks. They are remote, rolling, like a good walk in the country — you can even sort of take one yourself with the book, as a strolling figure is printed on the lower right corner of the pages, like a stop motion flip book. I liked reading them in short bursts on the subway, on the shuttle bus, or when I had just a few minutes. They don’t have real character development, they don’t seem like they should be remarkable or compelling, but somehow they are — I kept reading one after the other. There’s something in the way the stories resonate, they offer points to reflect how we’d do things differently, or how this couldn’t happen to us, or how it could happen to us, maybe…

Like potato chips, these anecdotes are the perfect thing when you are in the right mood.

This is the kind of book I’m always hoping I’ll find when I’m poking around in bookstores. Which is to say, it turned out to be something magical and necessary and I’d never even heard of it before.

Wilson writes stories that are emotional in a squeeze your internal organs kinds of a way, in a feel the pressure in your chest way. He pulls you in and makes you care enough you can bear the pain his characters are in — the rawness of their lives you can see — whether they are hired grandparents, confused teenagers, grieving factory workers, or awkwardly single and obsessed with worst case scenarios.

The stories reveal a reality that is very much ours, where just one thing is off. (A big mac eating baby, the ability to create a vast tunnel network under a town, grandparenting is outsourced to family’s who can pay, parents spontaneously combust.) Though maybe we just don’t know the world really is like in his stories…

Wilson’s young, so I can hope for many more stories. He’s writing a novel now, which I suppose is bound to happen. (Doesn’t everyone want to write a novel? Publishers want to publish novels, not stories, isn’t that supposed to be the deal?) On the strength of his stories, I’ll read it. But I’m eager for more stories, intensely felt stories like these, that are absorbing, that channel the power to change the world that is most palpable in adolescence but reachable in any extreme.

I haven’t read this book a second time yet, and I’m already looking forward to reading it again. Highly recommended.