First, a big thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC of We Love Anderson Cooper written by R.L. Maizes.
This was a pretty even short story collection. While there were some standouts, none of the included stories were bad or particularly weak with one exception that I will explain below. They all shared a very subtle style and they all touched on different elements of humanity.
The standouts, to me, stood out in a big way. "We Love Anderson Cooper," the story of a soon to be Bar
Mitzvahed young man who was struggling with his sexuality, was both heartbreaking and hilarious. It was particularly strong because the plot of the story never overshadowed the authenticity of what I saw as the real struggle: figuring out that becoming an adult means balancing your own needs with the way your actions affect others.
Another really strong story was "Tattoo," which I read twice and would like to revisit a third time. Of all the stories in the collection, this was the one that most sucked me in because there was something happening below the surface that I wanted to figure out. I'm not sure I have. don't misunderstand me: this isn't some confusing, dark and twisty story. While there is definitely magical realism at work in this one, the plot itself is very straight forward. There's just a lot of social commentary that I want to fully think through. This story was my favorite of the bunch.
As I mentioned above, only one story in the collection really missed the mark for me and that was "Collections." It's not that I didn't enjoy the story. It was fine. It's just that it didn't reach the quality that the other stories had and, frankly, when I was thinking about writing this review and revisited the Table of Contents, I couldn't remember reading it. It was just a very bland story and I think that being mediocre made it stand out because the rest were so strong.
The rest of the stories cover some of the uglier elements of humanity: infidelity, bitterness, becoming a cat. they are solidly good, steady reads. I'll say this: if you like character driven stories over plot heavy writing, these stories are for you. They are like a tooth with an exposed nerve; they show the things about human nature that we'd probably rather avoid. This, to me, is a must read.
