The Nimrod Flipout: Stories

I am at a loss for how to describe Etgar Keret's work to those who've yet to have the pleasure. To comment merely on his stories brevity - the longest I believe comes in at perhaps eight pages and thirty fill this slim volume - would make him seem too much the trickster, a writer with a gag instead of the extraordinary story teller one will meet in "The Nimrod Flipout." Perhaps instead I might offer examples of a few of his topics - a man falls into an existential crisis when he wakes to find his beloved dog licking his morning erecting; a character is obsessed with a kiss his girl friend had long ago; the most average of men finds extraordinary success in the most average of ways begging the reader to ask why haven't they - but no, simply going through the stories one by one seems almost voyeuristic. Not to sound too Forest Gump-esque, but Keret's collection resembles nothing so much as a box of varied chocolate truffles, each bit sized, each unique, each extraordinary in its own right, even if it doesn't meet your particular taste. Life may not be like a collection of Etgar Keret short stories, but the world be better off if more reading experiences were. Highly recommended.

Any reader tickled by the early stories of Woody Allen - the one about the moose at a costume party comes to mind - will delight in these stories. They are witty and poignant in unexpected ways, rambling sometimes like a conversation with an underachieving friend you knew in middle school who with the sensibilities of a 14-year-old has had adulthood thrust upon him. Making meaning of it all, when life was supposed to be simple, is a task that leads his narrators in a hundred circuitous ways to incomprehension - and who wouldn't be puzzled by some of these developments, e.g. a beautiful woman who turns into a hairy man at night, parents who shrink until they fit into a shirt pocket, and so on. Meanwhile, as readers, we look on like witnesses to complications that have all the oddball requirements for an appearance before Judge Judy. Someone expecting "Anna Karenina" will no doubt be disappointed by these quirky, magical, sometimes disturbing, and often heart-rending stories. But if philosophical delight at life's absurdities is something of a tonic for you, you won't be disappointed in Keret's imaginative world.

Who knew the Magical Realist mantle would end up in Tel Aviv? (There's no better place for it!) This is a somewhat uneven collection of short stories, thus the missing star. However, it's extremely rare to find a short story collection where that isn't the case. Maybe he gets half a star back, and rounded up to the nearest star, because most of these tiny fables are incredibly good. Several are snort-wine-out-your-nose funny, some are perfectly sly, and others are sweet or poignant without sentimentality. A few lumber along unfulfilled, but just a few. (And they're really short.) He's very a fine writer even in translation, with clear eyes and no fear.

Short stories that run from page- to chapter- length offer giggles, snickers, thought-provocation, a skewered lens on young adult humanity's strangenesses, as written from the point of view of a sort of anthropologically objective, but rather warped, insider. I've asked my local library to purchase ALL of Etgar Keret's published works, and plan to do the same for my personal collection. These stories are often laugh-out-loud and read-aloud weird and wonderful - like wasabi peanuts, they have zing and crunch - and leave me wanting more!

After having read an interview with Keret, I was enticed to read some of his stories, betting that they would be pretty good - I was amazed to find out that my high expectations were met and far exceeded. I don't know how he does it, but he is able to give us honest, hilarious glimpses of the truth in life. IF that's too ambiguous for you, trust me, these stories are entertaining, funny, and at the same time, they have meaning and you feel like you learned something worthwhile from reading each.