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Circling the Drain: Stories
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780688179090
Edition: 1st ed
ISBN: 0688179096
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: June 01, 2000
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: May 16, 2000
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Review:
In 15 short stories, Amanda Davis takes the raw emotions of love and loss and throws them into surreal perspective. Sometimes the stories are explicitly fantastic and dreamlike, like the romance with the "boy who chased freight trains" in "Chase." Sometimes the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred--the high school protagonist of "Faith or Tips for the Successful Young Lady," for example, has a "fat girl" companion that only she can see, a mocking chorus that forces her to recall the traumatic incident that led to her suicide attempt. And sometimes the surrealism comes from slowing a "realistic" moment down to closely examine its various perceptual components, as in "The Very Moment They're About," which captures two adolescents just before their kiss. Or in this scene from the title story, when a jilted lover jumps off the Williamsburg Bridge: Later it is the air she will remember. The sharpness of it as she inhaled: crisp like paper. She could have been breathing paper. There was a rush of sound, like a train passing, or maybe like she was the train. Thick colors swirled and time became molasses as her legs slowly tumbled around behind her and then over her head. She thought that it was like being inside a spin-art toy. She was the blob of paint spreading thinly every which way, spindling in all directions, pulled flat, slow and hard. That was how she tumbled and then time caught up with itself and she dropped. That intricate dissection of a moment's sensual and emotional register comes through in even the most naturalistic of these stories ("Red Lights Like Laughter," "The Visit"). Circling the Drain reveals Amanda Davis as a skilled crafter of character and tone, and marks her as an author to watch for some time to come. --Ron Hogan
Enter into the worlds of fifteen young women who, despite their vastly different circumstances, seem to negotiate an eerily similar and unavoidably dangerous emotional terrain. With a visceral bite or a surreal edge, each electrically charged story in Circling the Drain presents women trying to understand the nature of loss--of leaving or being left--and discovering that in the throes of feverish conflict, things are rarely what they seem. By turns dark and lyrical, ferocious and playful, these stories are precise, startling, and undeniably original. Reading them is a cathartic, mesmerizing literary experience.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Oh, what a legacy
These are miraculous stories, mostly, and the ones that are not quite perfect just make the reader mourn for losing Davis's future output. Her clear, often magical voice leads the reader through both Carveresque real life and Dahlesque fantasy (sometimes in the same story). You'll walk away happier, sadder, and with a sigh for what might have been.
Please get yourself this book. It's a gift from a wonderful talent.
Rating: - Engrossing, surreal short stories!
Amanda Davis has created some very surreal, disarming and fanciful stories in Circling the Drain. The stories have elements of magic realism that make them literary and beautiful, but they are also quite vivid and heart wrenching with their messages of love and longing, of loss and despair in a wonderfully lyrical and undeniably nuance. My favorite stories are "Red Lights Like Laughter," "Faith or Tips for the Successful Young Lady," "The Visit," and "Prints." Each of these stories had touched ... Read More
Rating: - amazing...brilliant...I love this writer
I found this book in a friend's pile, pulled it out, and didn't surface for hours. I can't believe it took me this long to get to it. It's diabolically funny, seeringly honest, and remarkably well-written. This is a must read.
Rating: - A Vivid, Engrossing Prism -- A Wonderful Fiction Debut
Davis is an eagle-eyed tourguide to the lives and souls of young people who feel 'more stuck than they ever had before' (to paraphrase the author). The stories are by turns melancholy and mordant, exciting and nuanced. Her unblinking gaze and velvety prose makes for an arresting map of 'stuck souls' and the often bizarre routes they take to see clearly or change their lives.
Rating:  - Promising but needs refinement
I found this an interesting debut collection of short stories but was disappointed that some of Davis's writing was spoiled by sloppiness and inattention to detail. In one story, she changes a character's name midway through from Angela to Andrea; in other stories she trips on awkward phrasing and gives us important details too late into the story. Despite these flaws, her work is original and fresh, and many of her characters are compelling, though a bit adolescent at times.
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