Synopsis
About Aleksandar Hemon
See more books from this AuthorNational Book Award–nominated author Hemon (The Lazarus Project, 2008, etc.), a Bosnian now based in Chicago who has had several stories published in the New Yorker, offers a series of interconnected, first-person narratives about a Bosnian writer who moves to Chicago and has a story called “Love...
| Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesAleksandar Hemon begins the first story in his new collection with a feat of misdirection: “It was a perfect African night, straight out of Conrad: .
Jun 24 2009 | Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesA lot of these stories hinge on seductive lies and charismatic liars, and Hemon's writing, even as it supplies some of the richest delights in contemporary prose, as well as some of the best jokes, seems haunted by a wish to deliver an impossibly authentic witness to unspeakable tragedy.
Aug 15 2009 | Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesLove and Obstacles, a collection of stories linked by an unnamed Bosnian writer-narrator, tests what it describes as Hemon's "well-rehearsed story of displacement and writing in English" to breaking point.
Sep 27 2009 | Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesThen there’s that mirage of a title, which comes and goes in these stories as the name of a poem or story the narrator has written elsewhere (teasingly, “Everything” was first published in the New Yorker in 2005 as “Love and Obstacles”).
Aug 11 2009 | Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesSummary: A collection of linked stories with a young poet and his tribulations, concerning women, emigration, poems, freezer collection...
Oct 24 2009 | Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesBut, where the Nabokov connection begins is also where it ends, and Hemon’s new collection of linked stories Love and Obstacles is peppered with such outright clunkers as “A tableau of panting, unctuous bodies, limbs entangled like mating snakes,” metaphorical stretches like “his right hand hangi...
| Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesBest known for last year's National Book Award finalist, "The Lazarus Project," Bosnian writer Aleksandar Hemon is a bilingual genius who has been compared to Vladimir Nabokov, among other cross-vernacular masters.
May 22 2009 | Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesThough the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel considered Hemon's subject matter trite and uninspired, most critics, in spite of a few complaints-including some awkward language, a sporadic anti-American undercurrent, and forced connections among stories-were pleased by Hemon's return to familiar terrain.
May 04 2009 | Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesReading the stories in in Aleksandar Hemon's new collection, Love and Obstacles , you may feel nearly giddy with pleasure at how beautifully written, funny, and entertaining they are, and at the depths of tenderness and seriousness swirling beneath their wry, deceptively offhand surface.
| Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesImpediments, more than love, are the foundation of Love and Obstacles: Stories (Riverhead, May 2009).
Sep 19 2009 | Read Full Review of Love and ObstaclesAn aggregated and normalized score based on 49 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes