Over the weekend I read Adam Haslett's short story collection You Are Not A Stranger Here. Haslett tends to write the same gay man on the verge of a nervous breakdown character, but in about half the stories he does it to good effect. The other half reminded me of David Leavitt's awful While England Sleeps. That novel bothers me because the writing is so unimagintive and the narrative can't even cover it up. The characters are English so they all have "tea" and "ride the tube" like Leavitt had an English cultural checklist. "Brolly," check. And the thing still receives good reviews. After I finished it in disgust, I went back to Amazon.com to click that each positive review was definitely not helpful.
Back to Haslett though, he's a better writer than Leavitt. The quote below comes from the story "War's End":
Despite all the explanations, he's never been able to rid himself of the conviction that his experience has a meaning... That it is there to be seen if one has the eyes. He's been told that this is a romantic notion, a dangerous thing to cling to, bad advice for the mentally ill. Perhaps it is. Though the opposite has always seemed more frightening to him, lonelier--the idea that so much of him was a pure and blinded waste.
Besides the worthwhile stories, the book is also worth picking up for the back cover picture of Haslett bundled in a tweed coat and scarf.
