Men Giving Money, Women Yelling: Intersecting Stories

Rating:
Summary: dull, flat, limited lives narrated in literary tones
Review: Mattison is a good stylist, but her world is limited, and her view is very, very small. She has chosen to confine herself to safe, artful examinations of domestic dailiness. It's pleasant enough stuff, but ultimately, this reader wants something more ambitious, something with greater passion.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: The best of dozens of short story collections I have read in recent years. The subtitle "Intersecting Stories" doesn't do justice to the work as a whole. I would call it a novel, many (though not all) of whose chapters could stand alone as stories. Works as a whole -- an important work of fiction by a superb writer.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: The best of dozens of short story collections I have read in recent years. The subtitle "Intersecting Stories" doesn't do justice to the work as a whole. I would call it a novel, many (though not all) of whose chapters could stand alone as stories. Works as a whole -- an important work of fiction by a superb writer.

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing and well-crafted stories
Review: The characters in "Men Giving Money, Women Yelling" live in New Haven, Connecticut, site of Yale University, but the college is a supporting character in this set of interconnecting stories. The characters are students and teachers, carpenters and business people and as we progress from story to story we begin to see their lives are all more or less connected. Like the movie "Magnolia" part of the fun of reading these stories is trying to figure out how everyone is related to the other characters. One central figure in all their lives is Denny Ring, a charming but disturbed drug addict. He is one of the "men giving money" of the title, and many of the "women yelling" are yelling in response to his manipulations. As is the case with a lot of short story collections, some of these tales work better than others. Mattison's attempts to depict racial tensions in the area are a little too overt, but her writing shines when showing the outrageous attractiveness of Denny, a dangerous and ultimately doomed protagonist. She is also adept at drawing all the disperate stories together, culminating in a concluding story that is wonderfully satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing and well-crafted stories
Review: The characters in "Men Giving Money, Women Yelling" live in New Haven, Connecticut, site of Yale University, but the college is a supporting character in this set of interconnecting stories. The characters are students and teachers, carpenters and business people and as we progress from story to story we begin to see their lives are all more or less connected. Like the movie "Magnolia" part of the fun of reading these stories is trying to figure out how everyone is related to the other characters. One central figure in all their lives is Denny Ring, a charming but disturbed drug addict. He is one of the "men giving money" of the title, and many of the "women yelling" are yelling in response to his manipulations. As is the case with a lot of short story collections, some of these tales work better than others. Mattison's attempts to depict racial tensions in the area are a little too overt, but her writing shines when showing the outrageous attractiveness of Denny, a dangerous and ultimately doomed protagonist. She is also adept at drawing all the disperate stories together, culminating in a concluding story that is wonderfully satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Similar to Reading about Everyone in a Small Town
Review: The first story in this collection ran in The New Yorker a couple of years ago, and I liked it so much I clipped it out and showed it to all my friends. The book is great - it somehow makes you happy to be reading it, even though some of the themes are sad. Mattison gives the characters a kind of universal daffyness that is present in modern life, but unheralded. And the linking is done really well, making it read more like a novel than like stories.