Disruptions

 

                                        *free review copy* 

Title: Disruptions 

Author: Steven Millhauser

Publisher: Knopf

Release Date: 8.1.23

Publisher’s Summary 

An exquisite new collection from a Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the short story, the culmination of a five-decade career: work that takes us beneath the placid surface of suburban life into the elusive strangeness of the everyday

Here are eighteen stories of astonishing range and precision. A housewife drinks alone in her Connecticut living room. A guillotine glimmers above a sleepy town green. A pre-recorded customer service message sends a caller into a reverie of unspeakable yearning. With the deft touch and funhouse-mirror perspectives for which he has won countless admirers, Steven Millhauser gives us the towns, marriages, and families of a quintessential American lifestyle that is at once instantly recognizable and profoundly unsettling. Disruptions is a collection of provocative, bracingly original new work from a writer at the peak of his form.

My Review

Don't you just love it when you read something out of your comfort zone and it pays off? I'm not usually a fan of short story collections, and I had never heard of Steven Millhauser, but this collection being described as a glimpse "beneath the placid surface of suburban life into the elusive strangeness of the everyday" really caught my attention. I read the first story to get a feel for the author's style (after which point I often give up) and felt like I discovered a hidden gem. Then I found "it." You know "it"...that short story that just really sticks in your brain. In this collection, it is "Guided Tour." I haven't been this mesmerized by a short story since reading Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. Such a treat!