Goodnight, Beautiful Women is a debut collection of eleven interconnected short narratives all revolving around young girls and burgeoning women in coastal Maine. I would not call this a collection of short stories; rather, they are brief scenes that give an overall sense of the confusion of desires of young women on the verge of understanding the motives of men.
The writing in this collection is intense. Noyes' imagery in these short narratives creates piercing anticipation. The scenes she creates are gripping from the outset, with familiar but haunting characters. I loved the fullness of the stories she wove. One of my favorites, "Drawing Blood", was reminiscent of Sarah Waters' historical fiction. The stories are all about relationships, between husbands and wives, or between mothers and daughters, or first loves. The stories are dark, melancholy, and without redemption, usually leaving the main character hopeless.
The thing about literary short stories, however, is that often they're just not stories. The stories in Goodnight, Beautiful Women were scenes, or paintings, or like the beginning-middle chapters of a powerful novel. These stories present an overall mysterious feeling of depression, but they weren't stories as I'm used to stories. I'm expecting a beginning/middle/end story arc, an enticing story with a satisfying denouement, and that is not what you get here. With each of these stories Noyes easily grabbed my heart with riveting beginnings and then left me, wilted and abandoned, wondering what happened.
Noyes definitely has the skill and literary chutzpah to pull off a great collection here, but if you're like me and like resolution, you may be disappointed. I'm looking forward to her next work. Many thanks to Netgalley, Grove Atlantic, and Anna Noyes for the advance copy.… (más)
I was a little disappointed with this collection. It's well written, but at the end of each story I found myself uninvolved and wondering if the author had a point. It felt a little like thumbing through someone else's family photos, representative, but if you haven't built up a relationship with the person and there's nothing unique about the situation, it's hard to be too interested. Having said this, I do think some people will enjoy this book, the style just isn't for me.
I had a hard time with this collection for all the right reasons. Noyes managed to get under my skin in a very subtle way, which made reading many of these stories an oddly illuminating, uncomfortable experience. I wrote a more detailed review on my blog (here's the link - https://cleverboots.net/2017/03/22/on-being-uncomfortable-good-night-beautiful-w... but overall I would say that this collection is very much worth the read, and that Anna Noyes is one to watch.… (más)
These tales of girls and women all had in common a sense of menace, mostly—but not always—sexual, countered by an almost pathological innocence. The yin and yang of them made for some really strong stories, with lovely language throughout. A few just hit the sense of internal struggle pitch-perfectly—a good collection, worth reading.
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The writing in this collection is intense. Noyes' imagery in these short narratives creates piercing anticipation. The scenes she creates are gripping from the outset, with familiar but haunting characters. I loved the fullness of the stories she wove. One of my favorites, "Drawing Blood", was reminiscent of Sarah Waters' historical fiction. The stories are all about relationships, between husbands and wives, or between mothers and daughters, or first loves. The stories are dark, melancholy, and without redemption, usually leaving the main character hopeless.
The thing about literary short stories, however, is that often they're just not stories. The stories in Goodnight, Beautiful Women were scenes, or paintings, or like the beginning-middle chapters of a powerful novel. These stories present an overall mysterious feeling of depression, but they weren't stories as I'm used to stories. I'm expecting a beginning/middle/end story arc, an enticing story with a satisfying denouement, and that is not what you get here. With each of these stories Noyes easily grabbed my heart with riveting beginnings and then left me, wilted and abandoned, wondering what happened.
Noyes definitely has the skill and literary chutzpah to pull off a great collection here, but if you're like me and like resolution, you may be disappointed. I'm looking forward to her next work. Many thanks to Netgalley, Grove Atlantic, and Anna Noyes for the advance copy.… (más)