Maura (maura853) - , reviewed on 9/19/2020 + 542 more book reviews

Abandoned after reading two stories in full, and dipping into others. The stories I read seem very lightweight and literal. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of "thinking outside the box" of the original messages, in either narrative or technique. I came away without much sense that Butler had mined the possibilities of the stories behind his vintage postcards.

I requested this as a Christmas present some years ago, because I just loved Butler's story "Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of Parrot." Now, there's a story that takes a thin, back of an envelope premise and spins it into gold -- funny, sad, a masterclass in how to use an off-beat perspective. (The story, if you're not familiar with it, does exactly what it says on the label: told from the POV of the reincarnated husband, who is forced to watch the bedroom antics of his wife, living it up as a Merry Widow ...)

The other thing that I don't like about this collection, is that Butler, well, cheats: he felt the need to "enhance" the intriguing bare bones of the postcard messages with a link to a contemporary newspaper story -- I guess he felt the need to added narrative oomph ... I don't think that was necessary, and it feels like it made a nonsense of the challenge of spinning a story from the old postcards ...

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