DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
Award-winning author Nicole Krauss’s excellent first collection of short stories brims with many of the themes of legacy, identity, and love that run through her bestselling novels. These are stories about how to be and how to be yourself within the embrace and confines of family and society. Krauss narrates the book herself in a light and attractive voice, with easy pacing and exquisite enunciation. Yet her tone is so tranquil that it sounds either as if she’s reading aloud while sleepwalking or reciting old fairy stories. Given Krauss’s interest in history and heritage, and plots that hint of magic, the latter may have been the intent. It’s not unpleasant, but for some, it might create unintended distance between the listener and Krauss’s wonderful stories. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
A superb collection. . . . Krauss’s depictions of the nuances of sex and love, intimacy and dependence, call to mind the work of Natalia Ginzburg in their psychological profundity, their intellectual rigor…Krauss’s stories capture characters at moments in their lives when they’re hungry for experience and open to possibilities, and that openness extends to the stories themselves: narratives too urgent and alive for neat plotlines, simplistic resolutions or easy answers.” — Molly Antopol, New York Times Book Review
"These stories put Krauss's lyric, precise prose—and, more importantly, her inquisitive and unsparing mind—on full display.. . . . The title story is at once moving and pitiless. It is a daring story even in the context of a daring collection, and it proves wholly that aesthetic simplicity has not reduced the scope of Krauss's intellectual and creative powers at all." — Lily Meyer, NPR
“A sustained shot of brilliance. . . . By turns tight and exuberant, disciplined and expansive, the collection shimmers with insight and moments of perfectly realized beauty. It provokes unabashed laughter, in inspires profound thinking, it delights and disturbs in equal measure. . . . Joy and woe are woven fine in this extraordinary book.” — Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe
"Nicole Krauss, one of the great novelists working today, has never shied away from asking the big questions. But as her powerful new collection of short stories shows, her power lies not simply in her own ability to interrogate life — but in the way she calls on her readers to do the same.” — Alice Fishburn, Financial Times
"TO BE A MAN offers the pleasure of being in the company of Krauss' surprising, challenging mind, tugged along by an imagination that's ever curious about the limits and possibilities of fiction, of time, and of love. . . . A collection of wonders." — Julie Buntin, San Francisco Chronicle
"How much do we really know ourselves and each other? These questions linger long after the final pages of this supremely intelligent collection." — Aminatta Forna, The Guardian
“What defines a life well-lived?...Krauss winningly explores these and other weighty issues in a home run of a short story collection…Above all, these stories pay homage to strong women. As female characters mature, they find resilience in the power they wield despite societal constraints.” — Booklist (starred review)
“This triumphant first collection from Nicole Krauss crisscrosses the globe in 10 ambitious stories written over two decades that wrestle with sexuality, desire, and human connection…. This is a spectacular book.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Krauss’s first story collection succinctly but brilliantly examines sex, power, violence, passion, self-discovery and growing older through unforgettable characters in contemporary New York City, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Geneva, Kyoto, Japan and Southern California… Krauss is incredibly adept at portraying novel-worthy characters in this much shorter form.” — Sarah Stiefvater, Pure Wow
“This collection of stories from Krauss is a wonder, with the author’s signature straddling of the tragic and the absurd, her particularly Jewish frame of reference, and the extraordinary range of her narrative voice…A tremendous collection from an immensely talented writer.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“All ten stories have the quality of waking dreams—an otherworldly stillness—and examine why we are drawn to another, how excruciating it is to let go of a parent who’s died, or the moments when instinct overrules reason…they are united by Krauss’s unparalleled ability to convert what at first seem like digressions into crescendos of the sublime.” — O, the Oprah Magazine
“From a contemporary master, an astounding collection of ten globetrotting stories, each one a powerful dissection of the thorny connections between men and women…Each story is masterfully crafted and deeply contemplative, barreling toward a shimmering, inevitable conclusion, proving once again that Krauss is one of our most formidable talents in fiction.” — Esquire
“A beautiful, unique book…The stories are realist in approach but there’s a ruminating quality that reminds me of Patrick Modiano’s prose…Krauss’s creative framing, perspective, focus on love, sex, motherhood, and foreign lands are the common elements found throughout this extraordinary collection…While the unknown haunts these stories, perhaps the most significant consideration for Krauss is the concept of love as union…The idea of the independent woman is a firm stronghold in the stories, but also, the loss of companionship.” — Chicago Review of Books
“Brilliant, beautifully-crafted. . . . Many of the stories examine the ethical, emotional, and experiential legacies that parents and friends pass on to the next generation. . . . With exceptional precision, concision, grace, wisdom, and insight, Nicole Krauss creates a magnificent collection of stories that explore what the narrator effectively asks her son in the last lines of the final tale: Who will you be?” — New York Journal of Books
“Feels like talking all night to a brilliant friend...Krauss imbues her prose with authoritative intensity. In short, her work feels lived. . . . The strange urgency of Krauss’s art . . . continues to haunt a reader’s mind and heart.” — Joan Frank, Washington Post
“Many of the themes that appear in the rest of Krauss’ oeuvre are also present here: the tensions between community and isolation, between religious legacy and individual freedom, between the needs of the body and the desires of the mind.…To Be a Man is a collection to get lost in. And when one emerges on the other side, the world still shimmers with possibility.” — Washington Review of Books
“This collection delves into the mysteries of relationships and sexuality…In every story, tiny details and emotional acuity provide a vivid look at how life goes on.” — Entertainment Weekly
“Deeply satisfying…Each tale in the book bends the formal possibilities of the short story in a pleasurably elastic way. Krauss’ ability to tackle novel-worthy subjects at compact length is particularly bracing.” — Seattle Times
“The stories set up an opposition between the safe, orderly suburban American life her characters are used to and an unstable world of passion and intuition that they’re destructively drawn towards.” — Wall Street Journal
“Smart, sad and funny explorations of identity and purpose, and of tradition embraced or thwarted." — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Serpentine short stories that plumb human bonds and self-exploration, in settings from Tel Aviv to post-9/11 New York.” — Vanity Fair
"All the stories explore a central theme: What makes us who we are? They are intriguing, familiar, and ripe for discussion. In other words, they're book club gold." — Real Simple
“A virtuoso performance…transporting throughout…Krauss displays an ability to capture the hearts and minds of men and women alike…A high point in fiction in 2020.” — artsfuse.org
“Recent first collections of short stories from established novelists such as Zadie Smith (GRAND UNION, 2019), Joseph O’Neill (GOOD TROUBLE, 2018), and Jeffrey Eugenides (FRESH COMPLAINT, 2017) have provided a concentration of high quality writing, their tales cherry-picked from decades of successful publication. Nicole Krauss’ debut collection, TO BE A MAN, joins those ranks.” — Times Literary Supplement (London)
“In To Be a Man, each story has its own understated logic, situating the vastness of big, all-consuming questions amidst ache-filled intimacy….Despite our own period of big scams and global illness, Krauss’ stories remind us that the theater of desire will continue to be interesting as long as people—tired, hungry, and haunted by weighty histories—still move within it.” — Rain Taxi
Alice Fishburn
"Nicole Krauss, one of the great novelists working today, has never shied away from asking the big questions. But as her powerful new collection of short stories shows, her power lies not simply in her own ability to interrogate life — but in the way she calls on her readers to do the same.
Priscilla Gilman
A sustained shot of brilliance. . . . By turns tight and exuberant, disciplined and expansive, the collection shimmers with insight and moments of perfectly realized beauty. It provokes unabashed laughter, in inspires profound thinking, it delights and disturbs in equal measure. . . . Joy and woe are woven fine in this extraordinary book.”
Lily Meyer
"These stories put Krauss's lyric, precise prose—and, more importantly, her inquisitive and unsparing mind—on full display.. . . . The title story is at once moving and pitiless. It is a daring story even in the context of a daring collection, and it proves wholly that aesthetic simplicity has not reduced the scope of Krauss's intellectual and creative powers at all."
Aminatta Forna
"How much do we really know ourselves and each other? These questions linger long after the final pages of this supremely intelligent collection."
Sarah Stiefvater
Krauss’s first story collection succinctly but brilliantly examines sex, power, violence, passion, self-discovery and growing older through unforgettable characters in contemporary New York City, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Geneva, Kyoto, Japan and Southern California… Krauss is incredibly adept at portraying novel-worthy characters in this much shorter form.”
Booklist (starred review)
What defines a life well-lived?...Krauss winningly explores these and other weighty issues in a home run of a short story collection…Above all, these stories pay homage to strong women. As female characters mature, they find resilience in the power they wield despite societal constraints.
Molly Antopol
A superb collection. . . . Krauss’s depictions of the nuances of sex and love, intimacy and dependence, call to mind the work of Natalia Ginzburg in their psychological profundity, their intellectual rigor…Krauss’s stories capture characters at moments in their lives when they’re hungry for experience and open to possibilities, and that openness extends to the stories themselves: narratives too urgent and alive for neat plotlines, simplistic resolutions or easy answers.”
Julie Buntin
"TO BE A MAN offers the pleasure of being in the company of Krauss' surprising, challenging mind, tugged along by an imagination that's ever curious about the limits and possibilities of fiction, of time, and of love. . . . A collection of wonders."
Entertainment Weekly
This collection delves into the mysteries of relationships and sexuality…In every story, tiny details and emotional acuity provide a vivid look at how life goes on.
Times Literary Supplement (London)
Recent first collections of short stories from established novelists such as Zadie Smith (GRAND UNION, 2019), Joseph O’Neill (GOOD TROUBLE, 2018), and Jeffrey Eugenides (FRESH COMPLAINT, 2017) have provided a concentration of high quality writing, their tales cherry-picked from decades of successful publication. Nicole Krauss’ debut collection, TO BE A MAN, joins those ranks.
Chicago Review of Books
A beautiful, unique book…The stories are realist in approach but there’s a ruminating quality that reminds me of Patrick Modiano’s prose…Krauss’s creative framing, perspective, focus on love, sex, motherhood, and foreign lands are the common elements found throughout this extraordinary collection…While the unknown haunts these stories, perhaps the most significant consideration for Krauss is the concept of love as union…The idea of the independent woman is a firm stronghold in the stories, but also, the loss of companionship.
Joan Frank
Feels like talking all night to a brilliant friend...Krauss imbues her prose with authoritative intensity. In short, her work feels lived. . . . The strange urgency of Krauss’s art . . . continues to haunt a reader’s mind and heart.”
Esquire
From a contemporary master, an astounding collection of ten globetrotting stories, each one a powerful dissection of the thorny connections between men and women…Each story is masterfully crafted and deeply contemplative, barreling toward a shimmering, inevitable conclusion, proving once again that Krauss is one of our most formidable talents in fiction.”
New York Journal of Books
Brilliant, beautifully-crafted. . . . Many of the stories examine the ethical, emotional, and experiential legacies that parents and friends pass on to the next generation. . . . With exceptional precision, concision, grace, wisdom, and insight, Nicole Krauss creates a magnificent collection of stories that explore what the narrator effectively asks her son in the last lines of the final tale: Who will you be?”
Rain Taxi
In To Be a Man, each story has its own understated logic, situating the vastness of big, all-consuming questions amidst ache-filled intimacy….Despite our own period of big scams and global illness, Krauss’ stories remind us that the theater of desire will continue to be interesting as long as people—tired, hungry, and haunted by weighty histories—still move within it.”
Washington Review of Books
Many of the themes that appear in the rest of Krauss’ oeuvre are also present here: the tensions between community and isolation, between religious legacy and individual freedom, between the needs of the body and the desires of the mind.…To Be a Man is a collection to get lost in. And when one emerges on the other side, the world still shimmers with possibility.”
Real Simple
"All the stories explore a central theme: What makes us who we are? They are intriguing, familiar, and ripe for discussion. In other words, they're book club gold."
Wall Street Journal
The stories set up an opposition between the safe, orderly suburban American life her characters are used to and an unstable world of passion and intuition that they’re destructively drawn towards.”
Seattle Times
Deeply satisfying…Each tale in the book bends the formal possibilities of the short story in a pleasurably elastic way. Krauss’ ability to tackle novel-worthy subjects at compact length is particularly bracing.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Smart, sad and funny explorations of identity and purpose, and of tradition embraced or thwarted."
Vanity Fair
Serpentine short stories that plumb human bonds and self-exploration, in settings from Tel Aviv to post-9/11 New York.”
artsfuse.org
A virtuoso performance…transporting throughout…Krauss displays an ability to capture the hearts and minds of men and women alike…A high point in fiction in 2020.”
the Oprah Magazine O
All ten stories have the quality of waking dreams—an otherworldly stillness—and examine why we are drawn to another, how excruciating it is to let go of a parent who’s died, or the moments when instinct overrules reason…they are united by Krauss’s unparalleled ability to convert what at first seem like digressions into crescendos of the sublime.
Wall Street Journal
The stories set up an opposition between the safe, orderly suburban American life her characters are used to and an unstable world of passion and intuition that they’re destructively drawn towards.”
New York Times Book Review
A superb collection…Krauss’s depictions of the nuances of sex and love, intimacy and dependence, call to mind the work of Natalia Ginzburg in their psychological profundity, their intellectual rigor…Krauss’s stories capture characters at moments in their lives when they’re hungry for experience and open to possibilities, and that openness extends to the stories themselves: narratives too urgent and alive for neat plotlines, simplistic resolutions or easy answers.”
NPR.org
These stories put Krauss's lyric, precise prose — and, more importantly, her inquisitive and unsparing mind — on full display...The title story is at once moving and pitiless. It is a daring story even in the context of a daring collection, and it proves wholly that aesthetic simplicity has not reduced the scope of Krauss's intellectual and creative powers at all.”
Boston Globe
A sustained shot of brilliance…By turns tight and exuberant, disciplined and expansive, the collection shimmers with insight and moments of perfectly realized beauty. It provokes unabashed laughter, in inspires profound thinking, it delights and disturbs in equal measure… Joy and woe are woven fine in this extraordinary book.”
Financial Times
Short stories that ask big questions…A powerful new collection from one of America’s great writers.”
Jewish Book Council
"In To Be a Man, Krauss’s short fiction proves as elegantly crafted as her novels, brimming with penetrating understanding of the complex dynamics of modern families, and characters whose struggles with difficult truths ultimately challenge and enrich the reader’s own world."
San Francisco Chronicle
"TO BE A MAN offers the pleasure of being in the company of Krauss' surprising, challenging mind, tugged along by an imagination that's ever curious about the limits and possibilities of fiction, of time, and of love...A collection of wonders."
Washington Post
Krauss imbues her prose with authoritative intensity. In short, her work feels lived…The strange urgency of Krauss’s art…continues to haunt a reader’s mind and heart.”
USA Weekend
This triumphant first collection from Nicole Krauss crisscrosses the globe in 10 ambitious stories written over two decades that wrestle with sexuality, desire, and human connection…. This is a spectacular book.
Library Journal
06/01/2020
In this story collection, Krauss investigates mostly male characters, including fathers and sons, friends and lovers, moving worldwide as she touches on passion, violence, aging, generational differences, the ongoing search for self, and dreams dreamed, deferred, or destroyed. From the National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Prize finalist; with a 75,000-copy first printing.
DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
Award-winning author Nicole Krauss’s excellent first collection of short stories brims with many of the themes of legacy, identity, and love that run through her bestselling novels. These are stories about how to be and how to be yourself within the embrace and confines of family and society. Krauss narrates the book herself in a light and attractive voice, with easy pacing and exquisite enunciation. Yet her tone is so tranquil that it sounds either as if she’s reading aloud while sleepwalking or reciting old fairy stories. Given Krauss’s interest in history and heritage, and plots that hint of magic, the latter may have been the intent. It’s not unpleasant, but for some, it might create unintended distance between the listener and Krauss’s wonderful stories. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine