Rating: 
Summary: Keeps you going
Review: Seldom have I found a collection in which every single story is so memorable. My women's book group here in Germany discussed "Note to Sixth Grade Self" yesterday and absolutely loved it. Of all the classic and contemporary stories we have
covered in three years, this was the favorite. Congrats to Julie Orringer on an outstanding debut!
Rating: 
Summary: Every story stands out
Review: Seldom have I found a collection in which every single story is so memorable. My women's book group here in Germany discussed "Note to Sixth Grade Self" yesterday and absolutely loved it. Of all the classic and contemporary stories we have
covered in three years, this was the favorite. Congrats to Julie Orringer on an outstanding debut!
Rating:
Summary: Bitter-sweet Language
Review: Stunningly written. This collection of short stories was so absorbing, I didn't put it down until I was finished with the entire book. Captivating, eerie and dark, yet somehow beautiful. I dare you to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Bitter-sweet Language
Review: Stunningly written. This collection of short stories was so absorbing, I didn't put it down until I was finished with the entire book. Captivating, eerie and dark, yet somehow beautiful. I dare you to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, haunting stories
Review: These are all great stories. Julie Orringer's How to Breathe Underwater is a dark, beautiful and haunting collection of short stories. There are some rather horrific forms of tragedy and death in them. "Pilgrims" and "Note to Sixth Grade Self" disturbed me the most. But the women in these stories are fighters in so many levels. They simply deal with their lives in a unique way. I enjoyed reading this collection. I can't recommend this book enough.
Rating:
Summary: quietly moving
Review: this book is small, simple, quiet, and lush in it's treatment of the youthful emotional state. in that way, it's also vibrantly beautiful on a grand scale much larger than at first seems.read this book, cover to cover, then sit back and reflect.
Rating:
Summary: A phenomenal collection of stories
Review: This is the best book I've read all year. In sharp, gorgeous language, Julie Orringer has written nine knockout stories that moved me deeply. I read one of the stories, "When She is Old and I am Famous," in the Paris Review two years ago, and I loved it so much that I kept Julie's name on a post-it note by my desk. I came across a few of the other stories in various places afterward, and loved them just as much as the first. The collection does not disappoint. Every story is beatifully crafted and compelling. Some are funny, some are sad, but they are all filled with great characters and dialogue, and they all work beautifully. I have recommended the book to all of my friends, and I anxiously await whatever else Ms. Orringer writes in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable stories -- a pleasure to read
Review: When I first read "When She Is Old and I am Famous" in the Paris Review, I thought, "Who is this person? How on earth does she know so much about being human?" It's the sort of story that makes you want to offer it flowers and prizes. She does this in story after story. What Julie Orringer seems to have found is a perfect balance between compassion towards and clearsightedness about her characters. The stories are often sad, but also funny and so deliciously written that the sadness feels healing. The vivid, exact details put a reader right into the middle of the story -- a microscopic eye for the world combined with a feeling for the intricacies of human behavior and feeling and the ability to tell a page-turning story. Each one of these stories seems to clarify and illuminate previously mysterious corners of life. It's not often that a book, let alone a first book, affords such perfect pleasure in reading. Nothing I can say about the stories could convey what she does. Here are a few beginnings of stories, just to give a sense of the wonderful voices she uses. I'd like to put in the whole stories, because only that way can a reader get a sense of the rightness of the connections, the way that the stories work on all kinds of different levels, from straightforward reading pleasure to the creation of an embodied world to a chance to think about the ways we behave and what that means, to a quietly unobtrusive symbolism that gives the stories great richness. And the stories just keep taking you deeper and deeper. What a beautiful book. (From "When She Is Old and I Am Famous")
There are grape leaves, like a crown, on her head. Grapes hang in her hair, and in her hands she holds the green vines. She dances with both arms in the air. On her smallest toe she wears a ring of pink shell.
Can someone tell her, please, to go home? This is my Italy and my story. We are in a vineyard near Florence. I have just turned twenty. She is a girl, a gangly teen, and she is a model. She is famous for almost getting killed. Last year, when she was fifteen, a photographer asked her to dance on the rail of a bridge and she fell. A metal rod beneath the water pierced her chest. Water came into the wound, close to her heart, and for three weeks she was in the hospital with an infection so furious it made her chant nonsense. All the while she got thinner and more pale, until, when she emerged, they thought she might be the best model there ever was. Her hair is wavy and long and buckeye-brown, and her blue eyes have a stunned, sad look to them. She's five feet eleven inches tall and weighs one hundred and thirteen lbs. She has told me so.? (from "Note to Sixth-Grade Self")
"On Wednesdays wear a skirt. A skirt is better for dancing. After school, remember not to take the bus. Go to McDonald's instead. Order the fries. Don't even bother trying to sit with Patricia and Cara. Instead, try to sit with Sasha and Toni Sue. If they won't let you, try to sit with Andrea Shaw. And if Andrea Shaw gets up and throws away the rest of her fries rather than sit with you, sit alone and do not look at anyone. Particularly not the boys. If you do not look at them, they may not notice you sitting alone. And if they don't notice you sitting alone, there is still a chance that one of them will ask you to dance." (from "Pilgrims")
"It was Thanksgiving Day and hot, because this was New Orleans; they were driving uptown to have dinner with strangers. Ella pushed at her loose tooth with the tip of her tongue and fanned her legs with the hem of the velvet dress. On the seat beside her, Benjamin fidgeted with his shirt buttons. He had worn his Pilgrim costume, brown shorts and a white shirt and yellow paper buckles taped to his shoes. In the front seat their father drove without a word, while their mother dozed against the window glass. She wore a blue dress and a strand of jade beads and a knit cotton hat beneath which she was bald.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Put it Down
Review: Yes, I know Julie Orringer's mentioned Lorrie Moore as an influence, but just because "Notes to Sixth Grade Self" is in second person doesn't mean she's imitating the stories of Moore's _Self-Help_ collection as someone has previously suggested. It is clearly an original vision, especially when read with Orringer's other stories which center around the same intense painful childhood (or young adulthood) situations that are so horrifying that we frequently shove them to the back of our brains. I've followed Orringer since she published "Notes to Sixth Grade Self" in The Paris Review, and I'm glad I did. Orringer reveals childhood bluntly and with force, yet she maintains her craft story after story. The stories are character driven, but that is not to say the story plots lack action. The stories are extremely filled with tension, horror, heartache, relief. This collection is definitely haunting. Even my least favorite story in the collection ("Care") had its merits-- a definite sense of suspense and a complex protagonist. I found myself opening my mouth with surprise during this story, and it happened with more frequency in the rest of the book. Orringer is bound to be a new voice in fiction; a first edition of this book might be a nice thing to have one day! To those who do love Lorrie Moore, you would probably love this book. These stories aren't as humorous as Moore's; they are more subtle, which adds to that haunting quality previously mentioned. The stories are risky in the terrain they cover; the technique, however, is flawless. These are polished stories, yes. But they deliver.
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