
|
news and
reviews
December
2013
Bonnie ZoBell has reviewed My
Mother Was An Upright Piano on
her website : "These are more on the
short story than the prose poem end of flash
fiction. Even though they’re short even for
flash fiction, Hershman manages to tell full
tales, uncanny for their insight into the
human condition."
Muriel Maufroy has given My
Mother Was An Upright Piano a
delightful review over on the Gladstone's
Library blog: "As a whole, one could
say that a wind of freedom sweeps through
those pages in which science and poetry
stumble into each other and tantalizing
shifts of perception expose our secret
thoughts and feelings, some we did not even
know we had."
April 2013
Kerri Shadid says of My Mother
Was An Upright Piano in her
review in the May 2013 issue of World
Literature Today: "Her presentation of
the tragedy and the oddity of our human
lives is the typed equivalent of a
performance artist at MOMA: strange,
unfamiliar, captivating. The universe’s
dark energy palpitates on Hershman’s
pages; she gives emptiness form.
Characters struggle to communicate, to
make themselves known to others. Hopes
for the world to be other than it is are
met with silence. Longing blankets the
text. Sentences stop before they reach
their conclusion, words omitted by the
author in sympathy with the reticence of
her fictional creations. The unsaid
contains both dagger and salve, and
Hershman’s silences both break and heal
the heart." Read
the full review here>>
Martin Macaulay reviews
My Mother Was An Upright Piano
over at Sabotage Reviews, where my book
is shortlisted for their Saboteur
awards. He says: " It’s a solid,
unbreakable and inspiring collection.
Hershman creates worlds with depth and
heart. She shows us lives soaked in
loss; some with glimpses of hope, others
dystopian. Reading My Mother…
is a bit like discovering a boxful of
unfamiliar photographs in a curiosity
shop. You study each picture, try to
decipher the look on the subject’s face,
or work out what that object is in the
foreground. Hershman pulls you in to
these beautifully condensed fictions." Read
the full review >>
Jan 2013
Deborah Brooks reviews My Mother
Was An Upright Piano in the new
issue of Jewish Renaissance magazine,
saying "These ... are stories that will stand
rereading as obvious thought has gone
into each word and thus every sentence
deserves to be savoured."
I am delighted that my collection is
reviewed in the latest issue of Flash:
The International Short Story Story
magazine, in the excellent company of
Nick Parker's The Exploding Boy,
the Flash Fiction Day anthology Jawbreakers
(in which my story Stopwatching
gets a kind mention) and collections by
Etgar Keret and Jon McGregor's. In her
review of My
Mother Was An Upright Piano
Louisa Yates says: "A worthy
successor to her 2008 debut... MMWAUP is
at its strongest when dealing with
matter, whether it takes the form of
Google hits, neutrinos or moth's
wings... As an assemblage of particles
and people, Hershman's latest collection
is a refreshing take on the brief
meetings, one-off connections and
partial viewpoints that are so often the
subject of very short fictions."
Dec 2012
In her review of My
Mother Was An Upright Piano
in Necessary
Fiction Michelle
Bailat-Jones says: "The
diversity of subject on offer in the
collection is brilliant, but what really
impresses is how Hershman succeeds in
establishing longer, more complicated
narratives within each short piece.
These aren’t incomplete excerpts; the
reader doesn’t want or need any of these
fictions to go on longer or somehow
become another form entirely. But again
and again, out of a very short piece, a
fuller story blooms." Read her full review here.
Nov 2012
I'm thrilled and honoured that the Nov
16th edition of the Times Literary
Supplement includes a review of my book,
by Hal Jensen, who says: "Hershman's
quirky observations, often funny, focus
on small-scale human oddities, anxieties
and misunderstandings... This informal
style seems intended to capture - as
Shelley said we never could - the moment
when the fading coal of the imagination
is awakened to transitory brightness."
You can see the full review on my
blog.
In
her review of My Mother
Was An Upright Piano in The Bookbag, Ani
Johnson says: " It's said that the art of
short-story writing is totally different
from that of novels as the writer only has
ten or so pages to accomplish what others
do in two to three hundred. Imagine,
therefore, telling an entire story in
prose conveying depth and meaning in fewer
words than this review. It may be
difficult but, apparently, not downright
impossible as Tania Hershman has nailed it
with honours". Read her full five star
review here.
In
her review of My Mother
Was An Upright Piano in the
new issue (No. 80) of the Frogmore Papers,
Alexandra Loske says: " It seems that
Hershman has achieved two things here: She
has perfected the art of the very short
short story, making it appear utterly
appealing and perhaps one of the most
appropriate forms of creative writing of
our age. She has also managed to form a
bridge between poetry and prose. At times
it feels as if one is reading a very well
constructed, witty, moving long poem,
without the boring bits. Excellent."
September
2012
I'm
thrilled with two new reviews of My Mother
Was An Upright Piano: On
the Thresholds Short Story Forum, Vicki
Heath writes: "every word is perfectly
placed as she explores the offbeat world
we live in." Read the full review
here. And Jon Pinnock calls MMWAUP "
the work of a grown-up writer who has
gained the confidence to let her muse off
the leash and to follow it wherever it
goes, however unexpected that turns out to
be. " Read his review here.
Three
of the fictions from My
Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions
are featured on the excellent book
review site bookoxygen, which
describes the book as "56 short, strange
fictions which arrive out of left field,
bringing warmth, wit and a deliciously
off-beat perspective." Read them here.
August 2012
Sally
Zigmund
reviews the book on her blog, The Elephant
in the Writing Room, saying: "I am sure
that everyone who reads this collection
will see different colours, shapes and
meanings from the ones I have discovered.
But isn't that the point? These stories
are what the reader brings to them.
Reading Tania's fiction is like a being
overwhelmed by wave on a deserted January
beach that takes you to places you never
imagined. Stunning." Read her full review
here.
On Goodreads,
Berit Ellingsen says: "there is no doubt
that Hershman is an expert of the very
short story. The themes in the collection
are nicely cohesive and the voice and
narrative structure well varied. I’ve had
the pleasure of reading many of these
stories in their individual publication,
but reading them all together for a full
impression of the author’s warm voice and
deft descriptions, was even better." Read the full review.
And Roxane
Gay says
"The stories that were great ... were
truly great. I particularly liked how she
was able to warp reality and time in
different ways. Hershman is not lacking in
imagination and this is definitely a book
worth reading." Read the full review.
In Bookmunch,
Ebba Brooks calls My
Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions:
"experimental yet accessible...strong and
assured writing, which demands your
attention. No skimming or scanning here:
but even the most time starved potential
reader can and should be able to spare
three minutes to give undivided attention
to one of these." Read the full review.
July 2012
David
Clarke says: "Tania Hershman's
prose...[is] a kind of poetic prose, a
heightened prose - but somehow not prose
poetry. She's interested in the things
unsaid, the gap between desire and
fulfilment, things we leave hanging in the
air. That's where these short pieces work
best. She conjures a situation - sometimes
commonplace, sometimes surreal - then
leaves us to imagine the hows, the whys
and the what-nexts." Read
the full blog post.
Scott Pack, who reviews short stories over
at Me
and My Big Mouth, says of the title
story of my collection: "A more beautiful
few lines on the bittersweet reality of
adultery you'll be hard pressed to find.." Read the
4* review here.
June 2012
Benjamin
Judge says: "If I had to sum up Tania
Hershman’s prose in a word (and I don’t,
but I’m going to anyway for dramatic
effect) that word would be
‘alive’....Since The
White Road,
Hershman has been one of the names I most
often think of whilst arguing the short
story is actually going through a very
good patch thank-you-very-much. My
Mother was an Upright Piano
confirms her as one of the most
interesting writers around. You need to
buy this one..." Read his full review here.
Brian
Clegg calls the book "... a brilliant
collection. And the stories are so short
that if you don't like one it doesn't
matter - you are already into the next
(the difficulty is putting it down)". Read
his full review here.
|