Self-Help

By: Lorrie Moore

Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer

Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

In these tales of loss and pleasure, lovers and family, a woman learns to conduct an affair, a child of divorce dances with her mother, and a woman with a terminal illness contemplates her exit.

Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

©2019 Lorrie Moore (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

More Moore, please.

Moore's observations through her characters are breathtaking. Now I want to hold the book in my hands.

The narrator is pitch-perfect.

I’m a big fan

Moore’s writing is clever, brilliant, gut wrenching and heartbreaking at the same time. The narrator captures the bewildered, disappointed, transcended tone of the author’s characters with a survivor’s compassion.

Written by a lover of language!

Moore’s evident love for language drives this book, and you will not want to put it down (or hit pause.) It’s so good, I will also buy it and read the paperback. The use of second person narrator generates a deep compassion for the characters, and her metaphors are of a dark sense of humor, which change everyday objects into haunting ones, and as a result you may find yourself looking at your world in a livelier way going forward. Many times I found myself thinking, “brilliant, brilliant!”

Still so relevant

These wry and sad stories capture the predicament of the modern woman in ways that remain resonant in our post-millennial times. Beautifully read.

Thought provoking.

I thought I might find these stories sad or too close to home in some areas, but it turned out to be just the opposite. Lorrie Moore’s insight into the challenges many of us are called upon to face in our lives, put in the form of short fictions, is actually entertaining and strangely uplifting. The narrator is perfect.

Thought-provoking, beautifully written

I was first introduced to some of the stories in this book in one of my English literature classes in college, more than a decade ago. Though I am already familiar with them, the way they are written is still so refreshing, so beautiful and thought-provoking. The metaphors are used to describe things you would never imagine that way, but when you paused to think about, you’d think, “That is actually very visually accurate.”

This book is not gripping, edge-of-your-seat kind of read. It has a calm energy (with a dash of cynical humor), even when describing tense situations. I love this book and could listen to it over and over again.

Nuggets

There are so many nuggets of wisdom in these short stories. I found myself taking notes. Ideas or gems I wanted to remember. It's hard to believe it was written over 30 years ago!

Somethings missing

My sister read part of one chapter of this book to me and it seemed great. Something about the audio or maybe having all the context isn’t nearly as good as when she read it.

bleak!

This is a very bleak group of stories. I cannot recommend it at all. I found no redeeming qualities.