History on a Personal Note: Stories

by Binnie Kirshenbaum

Book Overview

From New York City to the former East Germany, from rural Virginia to affluent suburbia, the characters in these short stories grapple with love, loss, greed, perversion, and other awful truths as they try to transcend their limitations with occasional humor and dignity. In "History on a Personal Note," Lorraine, a Southerner, wonders if her German paramour will find the inspiration to leave his wife amidst the destruction of the Berlin Wall. In...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060520892
• ISBN13: 9780060520892
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 175 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful, Refreshing Story Collection

I just bought the new edition of this story collection because my old edition had gotten worn out. These are stories to be read over and over again. Binnie Kirshenbaum has a funny and unique narrative voice and her vision of the world is always unexpected. Had John Cheever married Flannery O'Connor, Kirshenbaum might have been their child. Stylistically, she is much different, however, and it is her characters that most engross the reader. She gives us adult characters who have not lost their sense of imagination, juxtaposed on a world that has, shrouded with the backdrop of more recent historical events.

Better than Terrific

Maybe I am a little bit biased because Binnie Kirshenbaum is one of my favorite authors, but these stories are amazing. They read as if the author is sitting there talking to you. They are intimate, but so very honest. Her trademark--hysterically funny and heart-wrenching, daring, tells it like it is as opposed to how we want it to be. These stories span time from the 60s til the present and go from childhood to adulthood and from the American suburbs to the rural south and across the ocean. I loved each and every one of them.