|
The Nimrod Flipout: Stories | 
 enlarge | Authors: Etgar Keret, Institute For Translation Of Hebrew Literature
Creators: Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy Used: $4.94
You Save: $7.06 (59%)
New (27) Used (17) from $4.94
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 22571
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 167
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0374222436
Dewey Decimal Number: 892.436
EAN: 9780374222437
ASIN: 0374222436
Publication Date: April 4, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Used - Very Good; Gently used book. Will be shipped promptly!
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
From Israel’s most popular and acclaimed young writer—“Stories that are short, strange, funny, deceptively casual in tone and affect, stories that sound like a joke but aren’t” (Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi)
Already featured on This American Life and Selected Shorts and in Zoetrope: All Story and L.A. Weekly, these short stories include a man who finds equal pleasure in his beautiful girlfriend and the fat, soccer-loving lout she turns into after dark; shrinking parents; a case of impotence cured by a pet terrier; and a pessimistic Middle Eastern talking fish. A bestseller in Israel, The Nimrod Flipout is an extraordinary collection from the preeminent Israeli writer of his generation.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 so-so April 8, 2006
concerned reader (Europe)
20 out of 22 found this review helpful
Some of these stories are brilliant, first round knockouts. Others are shtick-yawns. The best are like the wondrous short-short stories of Spencer Holst. The worst are whines from the slacker you'd never listen to for five minutes if you bumped into them at a bar. Buy the book for the wonderful, but expect a very mixed bag.
When he's good, he's good . . . April 21, 2006
KH1 (Middle America)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
There are many fantastic short stories in this collection, _The Nimrod Flipout_, by Israeli author Etgar Keret. There are also many that are reminiscent of first drafts from a night-school creative writing class. When he's good, Keret is a fantastic new talent, full of humor and existential angst, but when he's not - he's trite, cliche, and boring - one more young guy writing about getting stoned and laid.
The titular story "The Nimrod Flipout", is one of the best in the entire collection. Three young men are possessed, in turn, by the spirit of their friend, Nimrod, who killed himself after his girlfriend broke up with him. [Variety is also not Keret's strong suit. There are at least two other stories where someone kills themselves because they've been dumped.] After the narrator, the last to succumb to the spirit of his deceased friend, the possession repeats itself starting over again with Miron, the first to be possessed. It's a touching story about the frivolity of youth, and deeply tragic, as well; its also one of the funniest stories in the collection.
"Fatso", the opening story, I also loved. It is about a guy whose girlfriend turns into a fat, drunk, soccer-loving man after the sun goes down, and how, after spending many nights going out and watching soccer at the bar with this character, he begins to love his girlfriend, too.
This collection has its shining moments, and is highly recommended to fans of short fiction. However, don't be surprised if some of the stories dissapoint.
They say imitation is the best form of flattery...so let's try this one on for size... December 23, 2006
Adam Mezei (Prague, Czech Republic)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Pay close attention to what I'm about to tell you, kids, but Etgar Keret--the writer, not the charlatan, not the court jester, and not even the guy who seems to love all things that have to do with hummus--manages to preserve his characteristic Israeli wit and delectable charm in the English language. The translation of this book was stellar, and considering the butcher job that plenty of publishers do on books of this sort, with translations that lumber across a page like a rhinoceros instead of floating like a gazelle, I've got to stand up on my swivel chair (hopefully not falling off) to tell you how truly impressed I was with this sophomore effort.
Ideally, it's not easy standing and typing at the same time, let me tell you, but if Virgina Woolf could write longhand while standing at the same time--which they say it abundantly more difficult than typing and standing, whomever 'they' actually are in this case, but you can decide since it's not the most important part of what I'd wanted to say--then, well, I'd have to say that there are worse tortures to be had than standing and writing. For a writer that is. For other people, there are different tortures. For a writer, however, there is only one torture.
Believe it. An entire book can be written employing this sort of singalong, streaming, wavelike, approach? I didn't think it were possible until I blew through all of Keret's pages. It's not nearly as disappointing as some of the reviewers below make it out to be, and frankly, I think their less-than-stellar reviews are totally not in keeping with the cleverness of the renown Keret story mechanics. If you burrow between the lines deep enough, you'll eventually "strike it rich" with the discovery of the essential Keret of wisdom the sage Israeli author tries to dish up here for you, folks.
You think it's easy? Well then, try it yourself.
My writerly instincts are whispering to me that Keret did plenty of preparation in getting these stories good and ready. The man appears to have lived quite a lot, and these various narratives aren't the conjecture of some silly pre-pubescent kid who has never had certain kinds of, um, "relations." They're the musings of a man who's been around the global block, seen things, and done some more. I cite the examples of Australia, India, and New York City as locales which feature prominently throughout the pages of these tales.
I'd actually heard about Keret's book on something known as Nextbook (dot org)'s podcast, in which he talks about some of the challenges of getting these puppies published Stateside. Some US-based publishers weren't too gung-ho on his spartan comedic style, and while I do agree that they're a little on the skinny side, they're unique and tasteful in their own special sort of way, like when tasting a new flavour of ice cream at Ben & Jerry's for the first time when you're invited for a scoop by this hot girl with a wicked body that goes on forever and ever and the green eyes to match. But then I'd be digressing. Look, all I wanted to say was that this is a stellar collection of happenstance stories, which if you're an Etgar Keret fan, is right up his alley. Totally in keeping with what we expect from a man who is short on words, but long on snappy humour with an intellectual twist.
Throughout these pages, you'll learn a heck of a lot about the local Israeli culture, though I can't for the life of me fathom why Keret is always choosing German businessmen as the ones to do up the business deals with the Israeli high-tech types. Perhaps because Germans prefer Tel Aviv exclusively, where they can feast their eyes on the culture their forebears attempted to obliterate into dust? Maybe it's got plenty to do with their guilty consciences...
Ask Mr. Keret directly, and I'd be willing to bet dollars to dreidels that he won't admit it to your face. No matter. I'm merely theorizing. In a world of infinite possibilities, anything's possible.
I don't know what people are complaining about, either. Sure, the critics exist, but then you're not putting this book in its proper light. Keret's collection is like a digestive. You don't read it for its non-fictional musings, its meticulously-research suppositions, and novel hypotheses. No! You read it because you'd like a light, but classy, meander through the sorts of topics you'd typically engage your friends in had you been sitting with them instead of chatting with me, dig?
Still, who is this Nimrod dude? I know who he is Biblically, but then who is he inside the pages of this little collection? Who, who, who?
Jonesing for another Keret six-pack.
--ADM from Prague
 Israeli Magical Realism January 1, 2008
P. Willson (United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Who knew the Magical Realist mantle would end up in Tel Aviv? (There's no better place for it!) This is a somewhat uneven collection of short stories, thus the missing star. However, it's extremely rare to find a short story collection where that isn't the case.
Maybe he gets half a star back, and rounded up to the nearest star, because most of these tiny fables are incredibly good. Several are snort-wine-out-your-nose funny, some are perfectly sly, and others are sweet or poignant without sentimentality. A few lumber along unfulfilled, but just a few. (And they're really short.)
He's very a fine writer even in translation, with clear eyes and no fear.
Sometimes brilliant. Other times not. April 25, 2008
Andrew Corsa
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is a bit of a grab bag. It's a jumble of great and not-so-great stories, and you take what you get.
Some of the stories are absolutely fantastic, creative, evocative, and perfectly told. Often, these excellent stories elicited strong reactions from me, or made me smile at their strange, wonderful, and twisted genius. The first story of the book, "Fatso," is such a gem of a story (in structure, in its strangeness, in style, in images, in character, in a surprising dose of magical realism) that, in addition to reading it four or five times, I'm also going to photocopy it, and send it to two friends. I think they'll find it excellent as well.
Other stories are not nearly as good.
But, after reading several of the other Amazon reviews of this book, I wonder: perhaps all of the stories are incredible, and some just appeal to different kinds of people from others. Several reviewers and readers seem to agree that this book has some excellent and some not-so-excellent stories, but do they all agree about which are which? I saw that at least one reviewer really appreciated the book's title story "The Nimrod Flipout." But this was one of the stories with which I was thoroughly UN-impressed. It didn't move or excite me, and the writing didn't seem all that compelling. On the other hand, I absolutely loved "Halibut" - it is one of my favorite stories of all time. Each of the occurrences it describes is brilliantly timed, and the whole thing fits together in a brilliantly peculiar way. But, I wonder, did everyone else think that this story was excellent? I don't know.
So maybe all of the stories are excellent, and some appeal to people like me, and others appeal to different people. It seems possible. I'd be curious to know what other people think.
|
|
|
|
| |
