So are these stories, for the most part, sentimental pap with little or no merit? Do you think that the sentence: ‘A kitten’s tongue tickles the inside of my heart’ has, standing there on its own, in all its figuraitve figuraitveness, any literary value? An interesting question. Every reader could be said to be missing something so i’m missing what’s required to appraciate most of these stories, many of them also prize winning, many ripping beautiful phrases out of well known literary masterpieces (Prufrock) to little effect other than annoyance, and with central conceits that don’t work (sould as an ice-cue one must keep cool and close by), magical realist flourishes that leave one cold, and ‘meanings’ with capital Ms that ring hollow. For example ‘The Bookamking Habits of Select Species’ doesn’t quite make snese, never mind work as a piece of fiction – though its pretentiosn to a Borges-kind-of-clever seems to have dazzled quote a few (thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of…) readers, as well as a host of reviewers. The title story ‘The Paper Menagerie’ (2011) is such a lovely story, so well crafted and affecting it’s strange that everything else could leave you feeling cold.
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