Come Up and See Me Sometime

by Erika Krouse

Book Overview

With Mae West as her ingenious guiding spirit, Erika Krouse introduces us to thirteen young, single, geographically and emotionally nomadic women looking for self-knowledge and trouble. I like to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743202449
• ISBN13: 9780743202442
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

uncommon women and others

It's amazing how assured and vivid Krouse's writing is. The sentences take a life of their own. It's unfortunate the collection is being marketed as "sex and the single girl;" the phrase implies a slightness and of-the-moment nature that diminishness the quality and import of these stories. Her storytelling is remarkably assured and original--and the wit...ah, the wit....

original and dazzling

This is a collection of dazzling and original stories, portraying single women who are torn between the longing for love and the insistence on self-autonomy. With the wit and precision of poetic language, Erica Krouse depicts these struggles in such an honest way that we are, from time to time, startled to see ourselves in them. Therefore, the hilarious laughter provoked is always tinted with a slight sense of sadness.

Addictive -- read one story and you won't be able to stop!

Fabulous. Smart, funny, utterly entertaining. Erika Krouse is this generation's Lorrie Moore or Amy Hempel. She has perfect timing and rhythm, a combination of zinging one-liners and touching insight into the female soul. The stories are as addictive and readable as those of Melissa Bank's A GIRL'S GUIDE TO HUNTING AND FISHING, but they're smarter, more provocative, going one level deeper. I highly recommend. Best story collection I've read (and I've read a lot) since BIRDS OF AMERICA.

Reality bites

As the author Erica Krouse, said at the Tattered Cover author reading, "Authors have to be on all the time. There is no 'just going through the motions,' no 'just showing up' that one can sometimes do with a lot of jobs. You are just so exposed."Exposed. Honest. Funny because it's real and a little shocking. An odd thing that happened on the way to a relationship--life. Women often notice what happens to another friend, and see it through from beginning to end.Sitting in the audience and reading her book before the author arrived to speak, I had the audacity to laugh aloud, more than once. In a world of bibliophiles, one murmurs; I was out of place but the laughter was irrepressible. It's a funny book with observations that are both irreverent and so true.

Eye Opening

I strongly recommend this book. I savoured every word.Krouse's characters are new, refreshing, disturbing, thought-provoking and entertaining. I was most impressed by the moments she captures and chooses to focus on within her short stories. They're common moments. Moments we don't often consider. Perhaps if we did, we would learn as much about ourselves as we do about these characters. Sometimes they define the person, other times the event, and sometimes, dare I say it, society. I also found it amazing that Krouse can lead us from the heinous to the hilarious seamlessly, effortlessly. There are MANY laugh-out-loud lines in "Come Up and See Me Sometime." I won't list them - it would be a crime for me to steal your right to read them for yourself. All I can say, is I honestly don't remember reading another author who can make you think without preaching and make you laugh without effort.Krouse is witty, a little neurotic, and has a clear crisp voice. The 13 stories feature women in their late 20's to mid 30's struggling to find love or some equivalent. Some are well to do, others poor - all are living life in the best way they know how. Aren't we all...