I pulled this book up on Amazon to order it for a friend and I couldn't believe no one had reviewed it. I bought it in hardback when it first came out and was so impressed with the stories that I tracked down Ms. Nelson's earlier collections of stories, Land of Men, and The Expendables. I am glad I did as they each contain some gems. Female Trouble, though, is full of gems. They showcase Ms Nelson's talent for finding the fresh way of looking at the moral questions and difficult relationships that are the fodder for much of fiction. And while this is serious stuff, Ms. Nelson handles it with clarity and sensitivity and even humor. The first story is about a woman who returns to her childhood town with her young daughter and while reading the newspaper comes across something that forces her to confront her own troublesome youth. The device that drives this story is so compelling and creative that I was anxious to see i f Ms Nelson could sustain that level of creativity throughout the entire collection. She did. I believe you will find several characters and stories that stay wtih you long after you've put this one on your "A" shelf. ....

Antonya Nelson's stories dwell on relationships, and particular the day to day failure of relationships. The collection largely avoids reaching for trite conclusions, and also avoids the forced ambiguity that sinks many a creative writing professor trying to write about "normal" people. Almost every story is involving, only one or two descend into situations which seem too contrived. This collection is a pleasure to read--engaging, and by design somewhat small in focus.

Antonya Nelson's short stories are provocative and entertaining because they tell us a great deal about ourselves, both in terms of the way that her characters' actions and reactions mirror our own, as well as in how we respond to the situations and characters we encounter in her work. Her stories are populated by characters who seem damaged yet strong, whose actions and dialogue convey more to us than we may consciously realize. Antonya Nelson's gift is her ability to create realistic and compelling stories without the use of gimmicky or contrived hooks, and to keep her stories moving forward on the strength of her vividly drawn characters and their unique and all-too-human motivations. My personal favorites in this collection are "Dog Problems," in which a husband deals with the possibility that his wife loves her dog more than him, and the title story, "The Expendables," which remains with me the way that Flannery O'Connor's and Joyce Carol Oates's best short stories stay with me: like a haunting but pleasant refrain that won't stop replaying itself in my head. In this story we visit the scene of a wedding, and follow one of the the bride's brothers as he encounters his relatives, his future brother-in-law, and a gypsy family down the street in the midst of a funeral service. It is absolutely one of the best short stories of the 20th century, and helps to justify Antonya Nelson's selection by The New Yorker as one of the most important young writers in America today. I'm tempted to say that this is contemporary short fiction at its best, except that these stories would stand out regardless of when they were published -- which makes them not so much contemporary as timeless.

Antonya Nelson's collection of short stories, "Female Trouble", revolves around just that: women who are having trouble, often because of their womanhood or one of its attendant issues. Nelson manages to explore this over-exposed territory with enough insight and originality, and little enough shrill Bridget-Jones-ripoff whining, to make her stories worth reading.

And they're good stories. Nelson does everything a writer of short stories should do. She's skilled at crafting character and plot, her command of language is unwavering, and each story is self-contained, unique, and distinct from the others in the collection.

Still, something is missing. This is a good book, but not a great one. Nelson pulls her punches. Her subtlety and sense of balance - characters who are odd but not crazy, plotlines that are curious but not implausible - is what makes the collection worthwhile, but Nelson doesn't seem to know when to be direct. Her writing is good, but too muted to be powerful, and it's frustrating to read. She has great ideas, well-developed characters, the perfect setup, and then you turn the page and it's over. The stories all end in the proper story-ending way, with a climax and resolution, but there's no bang. Nearly every story left me wishing for just one more paragraph - that perfect event or line of dialogue or turn of phrase - something to push me over the edge from interested to affected, something to make her stories less strange and more profound.

Antonya Nelson's stock in trade is her laser-like understanding of and her affinity for the foibles and miss-steps of we mortal human beings. Anyone familiar with her "Nobody's Girl" or in particular "Living to Tell" can attest to that.
In "Female Trouble" she sets her sights on a close to her heart, I would assume subject, women: Professional women, divorced women, suicidal women, mother-earth women, young women and old women, pregnant women and the men who are fortunate enough to cross their paths.
"Female Trouble" is a short story collection. And I know I am going to get a lot of grief for this but it is a form of which I am not particularly fond. Ideally, a short story should be all of a piece. You should not crave for more. The author has to quickly create a world, inhabit it with interesting characters and resolve the story so that the reader is satisfied at it's resolution. The first story of this collection, "Incognito" is very well written and the premise is unique: a close group of three high school friends create an imaginary person, one Dawn Wrigley and use this persona as a means to act out all of their adolescent fantasies. The problem is at this story's end I craved for more, wanted loose ends tied, needed more information, felt cheated.
On the other hand in "One Dog is People," Nelson creates a world in which the basic premise of the story is tied up in a logical fashion with no lose ends hanging. This story also includes some of her most incisive writing: "A few days later I was sitting in traffic after dropping the children off at school. I relied on their disappearance every day; I could not stand such thorough neediness. And yet, as soon as they'd been swept into their buildings...I missed them. I fell under the heavy weight of guilt: how could I not be grateful? How could I not cling to what was left to me, cling and cherish?"
"Stitches" is in part about the relationship between a college-age girl (Tracy) and her mother (Ellen): "It was unnerving to be this girl's mother. She was so forthcoming. So frankly healthy...how had she gotten this way? Ellen felt somehow excluded from the process. She (Ellen) kept secrets---not in drawers or closets or diaries, but in her heart, behind her eyes, on her lips. Tracy's admirable openness seemed not to have been inherited from Ellen, so it must have come from her father."
As with most story collections, the quality here is variable. But what does not vary is Nelson's obvious love for her characters and her unflinching desire to get at the heart of things through the use of her gorgeous, even voluptuous writing style.

These stories are wonderful, very well-written, sharply observed. Nelson has an eye for detail that is so right on, so observant, filled with an underlying snappy wit. All of these stories are very strong and will motivate the reader to explore her novels. Enjoy.

Desparate people hiding behind normal lives populate Nelson's seven stories and a novella. Although her eye for details makes the stories vivid, false notes too often ruin her work. In "The Ocean", a terrified housewife hides in the bathroom with her baby while a robber, real or imagined, prowls the house. A terrific premise, but we never believe the central conceit---that a robber sees someone inside a house, but still breaks in during broad daylight? And why doesn't the thought of calling '911' even cross the woman's mind? Similary, in "The Written Word", a brother decides to kidnap his half-sister and use the ransom to get back to his real father. An engaging idea, but how the brother came up with this twisted scheme is never satisfactorily explored. Other bizzare relationships will rouse reader's interests: a woman has an affair with her stepson; a man dates his brother's ex. But the stories never get beyond the purely sensationalistic.

The Written Word, one of the stories in this collection, is one of my favorite short stories ever. I'd say it's about being a young kid in a family with real if ill-defined problems, and coming up with the sort of solution only a young imaginative kid would. His reaction to some pictures his mother hid feels so right and yet is very funny. These stories have heart. Dirty Words was another story that jumped out at me; I loved the Marxist coffeehouse line. But don't worry, I won't give any of the best moments away.

In "Family Terrorists," her third collection of short fiction, Antonya Nelson proves that her title, though apt, is by no means an oxymoron. The eponymous terrorists wreak mundane, unsensationalistic havoc (except in the eerily timely "The Written Word" where a little brother's prank diverts a jet and thwarts a longed-for escape.) These provocative acts include invitations to family occasions, ("Family Terrorists") giving birth, ("Dirty Words") uninvited help, ("Crybaby") or simply imparting unwanted knowledge, ("Loaded Gun"). Nelson seeds her prose with trenchant observation: "Her mother refused to understand tone, as if she were reading conversations instead of having them." "Bette's problem was that she merely missed drinking, like a hilarious friend who had moved away..." The stories unsettle by exposing the ironies inherent in our complacency. In "Naked Ladies" a painter divines his wife's infidelity from an array of ineptly rendered nudes. A woman sees how truly precarious her happiness is ("The Ocean"). A wife finally freed from her husband's obsessive ex-girlfriend misses being stalked ("Her Secret Life"). Antonya Nelson's gifts--deft characterization, gentle humor, supple language--entice us to marvel at the permutations of intimate sabotage.

What I loved most about this novel was that it was set in my hometown. Ms. Nelson has a good feel for the city and she certainly placed the characters in the right neighborhoods for their socio-economic ranks.

However, I had a difficult time believing that the affair would last so long before Evan did anything. This part was the only reason why I didn't like the book as much. It would take nearly a year from the time he discovers his wife is having an affair to wake up from his Jodi-coma? I can't imagine a Chicago guy doing this...or rather not doing anything.

Minor drawback perhaps, but a key one for this reader. Looking forward to the next work.

This book made me question whether a person can be both an intellectual, who is not guided by instinct and a person who can feel unconditional love for another human being. I think that the two personalities are exclusive and that each contributes its abilities to the world.

Antonya Nelson's Talking in Bed is a wonderful book. I became enraptured by the three main characters and fell head long into their lives. The triangle they form changes all their lives forever and even the resolution is equal parts both satisfying and disturbing because these three people will never be the same. That is both good and bad as it is the world outside of fiction. I give the author many points for making me care so much about these people (and even the main couple's children are given marvelous, small places to shine). The book is smart and very touching without becoming sentimental. There are no epiphanies only small decisions and deceits that reverberate. A wonderful read.

This informative and well-written book is only as good as the philosophical vision which informs and supports it, which in this case is the philosophy of libertarianism. However, libertarianism extols the virtues of the free market to such an extent that it seems toothless as a basis for business ethics. In my opinion, A Primer on Business Ethics could be retitled as A Primer on Business Apologetics on account to its excessive tolerance towards business practices (including kickbacks and bribery) which most people rightly find ethically dubious. What are we to make of a business ethics book written in 2002, which makes no mention of Worldcom, Enron or ImClone in its text or index? If ripping off stockholders is compatible with a libertarian conception of business ethics, then so much the worse for that conception. If it is not compatible with that conception, the authors should have mentioned it. The silence is deafening.

I would also like to add that the dedication of the book to the victims of 9-11 'because they were members of the business community' is in poor taste, because many of the victims were not business persons, and because the authors (absurdly) make the victims sound like martyrs for capitalism. It sounds like an opportunistic attempt to recruit the dead for the libertarian world-view. Perhaps the dedication is good for the business of selling the book, but that only shows that what is good for business is not necessarily good, period.

This is a clearly written, lucid and interesting business ethics primer that will be useful for anyone interested in business ethics. The main shortcoming of the book in my opinion is the general perspective of libertarianism from which it is written. While it is true that the book does not indulge in 'business ethics', it veers towards the other extreme of business apologetics at many stages. What are we to think of a business ethics primer, with a chapter on insider trading, which makes no mention of Enron or ImClone?

After reading one review of this book I wanted to see for myself and lo and behalf found that there is a discussion of Enron in the Epilog. (The reviewer spoke out without reading the book, which is dirty pool.) In any case, while the authors are indeed champions of the free market, this doesn't by any means tell the whole story. They also defend a virtue ethics in terms of which various professions are held to their (explicit or implicit) oath. People in business, in particular, are committed to make their enterprise prosper and if they engage, for example, in racial, sexual or other kinds of irrelevant discrimination, they are guilty of violating the ethics of their profession and may also be guilty of injustice in general. This book, thus, is full of precise enough guideliness for how to conduct oneself in business, what would make one an unethical advertiser, manager, personnel director, and corporate executive. The authors' view of advertising as an means of promotion rather than information dissemination is especially useful, as is their discussion of employment ethics. All in all a good text that is by no means easy on business, even if not a business basher as most such texts manage to be.

The way the review read, I thought this book would be interesting. It's strange, I know, but I find seduction combining older and younger parties intriguing (may I reccommend PURE by rebbecca ray of INNOCENTS by cathy coote for those of you in the same boat). However, this book was incredibly boring.
I'm not trying to be harsh, but from the very start I knew I didn't like Birdy Stone. The scene the book opens on is where Birdy is explaining to her students that depressing literature is much more meaningful and lasting than happy lit. And almost as if it were forshadowing, the whole book was...depressing.
Perhaps a good read for those in the mood for an emotional sponge, but deffinitely not a book for those looking for breathtakingly magnificent prose. It certainly wasn't MY book anyway. I just wouldn't reccomend it.

Antonya Nelson is a talented writer. Her words illicit emotional responses. Unfortunately by the end of this book my overall emotional response was "who cares?" A failing for me was Birdie's character arch - basically that there was none. Birdie is an unsympathetic character at the beginning of the book and even less sympathetic by the end. The actual murder mystery woven into the plot is anticlimatic. Either plot device (Birdie's "growth" or the murder's solution) needed to make a stronger impression. In general the book was great dissappointment.

I am baffled that anyone could find Birdy unsympathetic--must be the same people who don't like Becky Sharp (See Vanity Fair). Birdy would be a lousy assistant principal, but I certainly enjoyed sharing her journey.

I hope that someday, something will show me why Nelson has garnered such acclaim; my guess is, it's in the short fiction. "Living to Tell" is the second of her novels I've read, and did not improve my opinion. In fact, as a book collector, I'm not sure I'll keep it around.

First, and most irritatingly, Nelson jumps point of view from character to character juvenilely, within paragraphs. I'm not one to shy away from omniscient narrators, and enjoy p.o.v. switching; see Moody's "Purple America" for an incredible handling of what Nelson attempts to achieve here, from the dysfunctional family (that should have been a perfect family), to the use of alcohol, to the fascination with mortality.

Nelson's characters, including Mona, the young woman who can only have relationships with married men; her sister, the perfect-on-the-outside, party-girl-on-the-inside Emily; and their unappreciative, loose cousin Sheila, to name the women, are cardboard cut-outs, annoying, cloying, and entirely uninteresting as people. I can't get close to any of them, nor to their brother, the killer (literally & figuratively) Winston, who is the focus of the first chapter and has the most interesting adventures, which are mainly hidden but (incorrectly) guessed at by his unimaginative family.

Nelson fits all the pieces together, but provides us with very little to chew on, although a lot to complain about. I'm just the kind of person who'll try another of her books, though, considering the many accolades named on the cover of the book. Meanwhile, give me Moody for depressive families, Moore for doomed romances, and Wallace for addicts.

First let it be said that I adore Nelson's short stories. She consistently has stories in the Best American collections and they are always the ones I turn to first. United Front, a short story she has in I believe last years edition is easily my favorite of the lot. I started reading her short stories in college at U of A where she got her MFA and have loved her since then. This novel though, seemed tedious, drawn out and at times just plain boring. The characters themselves, though somewhat interesting aren't given enough space. Instead of one point of view she switches around, so I was never really sure who I was supposed to identify with. Also the jacket of the book leads us to believe this is a novel about the brother, when in fact in meanders all over the place. It's one big disfunctional family, which isn't interesting enough to hold my interest. There were times when the writing was wonderful, but the characters and all their whining got to be annoying. A bunch of loser kids, a mother with her head in the sand a father who hides out in the study should equal some sortof huge conflict that never really happens. There are all these little conflicts that never seem to go anywhere. I found myself scanning the last couple chapters but was bored bored bored.

Long regarded in literary circles as one of America's finest writers, Antonya Nelson has yet to find a wider audience. I suspect LIVING TO TELL will change all this. Winston Mabie returns to his rambling childhood home in Wichita, Kansas after serving five years in prison for the drunk driving accident that killed his grandmother. Always charming and handsome, Winston has become the Mabie family's shame, the one they don't know what to do with, the "alcoholic" of the family even as his siblings, parents, and uncle seek their solace and comraderie through booze. As the Mabies adjust to Winston's return and the changes he represents, they begin to question the direction of their own lives. Nelson has populated her novel with quirky, complex, and decidedly real characters who struggle with their separate, often private dramas and who always return to the shifting terrain of those who have known them the longest. Her prose is clear and detailed, never sentimental or heavy-handed, and it carries this story forward with a surety that is remarkable. Especially if you enjoy Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman (without the magic realism), you'll love this book.