Amazing to find a collection of short stories that leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat -- not just to find out what happens next, but to get that next drug-like dose of language. This is a GREAT read, immensely affecting, the writing gorgeous but seemingly effortless, and set in an intriguing place (Mid City, New Orleans). Barb Johnson aims high and then exceeds all expectations. I can't wait for the next one. More of This World or Maybe Another (P.S.)
I was hooked on Barb Johnson's book from the first paragraph. She created unique characters who I really cared about. I loved getting to know them and being involved in their lives. The only problem with this book was that it left me wanting more of Barb Johnson's stories. Can't wait for the next book!!
Gorgeous language! This is a killer collection from writer who infuses wisdom into her stunning prose, and manages, somehow, to create characters who break into our hearts and remind us of the need for generosity in an all too cold world. There are so many riches in the writing and in these stories that I had to set the book on my lap from time to time just to catch my breath and soak it all in! From Pudge's homemade valentine heart, Delia's gift shoes, Luis' catechism book, Chuck's "black-black" eyes and the lines on the back of Maggie's neck: Barb Johnson's 'people' and the sweet sadness of the things they bring with them will stay with me for a long time to come.
Reading Barb Johnson's debut collection is like catching up on old friends after high school, then after college, then when you're in your late 30s. Within the 9 stories that is what we get as we follow four friends in the back streets of New Orleans as they try to deal with life and its discontents.
When readers of short fiction think of the working class and their struggles, they are apt to think of Raymond Carver, whose tales of poverty pinched at the back of your brain with an utter sadness and grittiness. While Johnson's stories does follow the disenfranchised and forgotten, the difference is that her stories teeter on hope. All of her characters are in the space between giving up, yet not quite. The title of the collection captures it all: More of This World Or Maybe Another; or more of what we have now or maybe it might change. Her characters are hopeful in that way, seeing towards the future while living lives of drug addicts, lovers with hearts broken, and guilty consciousness of not being able to provide. Johnson's stories are about survivors not after the fact, but during the tumultuous events of their lives: we are seeing survivors surviving with sparkles of hope in their eyes. Johnson's worldview presented here is refreshing.
Her language is also remarkably her own as she skillfully maneuvers with different people and different personalities: like Delia, who struggles with grasping a foothold in this world that she is never quite used to, but was always there in front of her; there's Pudge, haunted by days of ridiculed in childhood, events which follows him attacking his manhood; there's Dooley who can't really seem to understand the world around him. All these characters and more tell stories that are heartbreaking, yet at the same time very hopeful.
Again, refreshing.
Indeed, More of This World or Maybe Another, is a very refreshing collection of interconnecting stories that reads more like a novel-in-stories than simply a story collection. To read this is to see the characters grow fully in a world gorgeously painted in all of his beauty and ugliness. Barb Johnson is surely a writer to keep an eye on. With already several wins in the literary world, Johnson is indeed someone we expect to her from for quite a while.
Well, what can i say, i loved this book. It's a beautifully crafted collection of interlocked short stories that to me really announces the arrival of a major literary talent on the scene. I'm not one to get teary eyed reading fiction, but - for one example - "If The Holy Spirit Comes For You" is a story so real, so wonderfully constructed that it would take a heart of stone not to be moved by what you read. And that is Barb Johnson's great gift - she creates characters who are real, and evokes a world which although alien to my own experiences I felt totally at home in while I was devouring these stories. Great stuff.
Wow... I just loved this book! The characters are so beautiful and sometimes sad, and the stories are so well crafted. This book is dense with phrases I wanted to highlight or memorize, because these are thoughts I have had but never expressed as well as the writer. I kept thinking to myself that this writing is "delicious"... and I did savor each paragraph. I love to read books about experiences that help me to sample other people's lives, and this book did take me into homes and hearts we all live near, but rarely experience. Keep those stories coming!
I set down this book with my ears ringing and my chest aching, everything around me electric and amplified. It's really that good. This collection is full of gut-punching, stunning prose, solid workmanship, and quiet skill.
Barb Johnson's haunting debut collection follows four characters anchored to a laudromat in New Orleans. Her character Delia says, "There's real trouble in the world. The kind that can't be fixed." And Johnson does not shy away from this trouble. Her characters are set against a backdrop of abuse, addiction, and senseless violence. Yet Johnson doesn't wallow in the spectacle of poverty or over-simplify or sanitize the ugliness. If Johnson shows us the worst we are capable of, she also offers us glimpses of light, small acts of unexpected kindness. Delia reassures us, "Love is not trouble...There is real trouble in the world, but there is real magic, too." No sentimentality, no easy answers. You WILL cry, but Johnson will also earn those tears. - Literary - Fiction - Poverty - Lesbian Fiction'
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