Staff Pick
If you, like me, love diary-esque, brief, direct, personal, reflective books like The Folded Clock or Dept. of Speculation, Ongoingness, or The Argonauts, you should read Little Labors. You will love it. Recommended By Britt A., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book — a key inspiration for Rivka Galchen’s new book — contains a list of "Things That Make One Nervous." And wouldn’t the blessed event top almost anyone’s list?
Little Labors is a slanted, enchanted literary miscellany. Varying in length from just a sentence or paragraph to a several-page story or essay, Galchen’s puzzle pieces assemble into a shining, unpredictable, mordant picture of the ordinary-extraordinary nature of babies and literature. Anecdotal or analytic, each part opens up an odd and tender world of wonder. The 47 Ronin; the black magic of maternal love; babies morphing from pumas to chickens; the quasi-repellent concept of "women writers"; origami-ophilia in Oklahoma as a gateway drug to a lifelong obsession with Japan; discussions of favorite passages from the Heian masterpieces Genji and The Pillow Book; the frightening prevalence of orange as today’s new chic color for baby gifts; Frankenstein as a sort of baby; babies gold mines; babies as tiny Godzillas …
Little Labors – atomized and exploratory, conceptually byzantine and freshly forthright–delights.
Review
"Galchen is, for my money, one of the most gifted stylists writing in American English today. Her funniness is otherworldly; she is the reigning champion of litotes, or understatement for effect. Preternaturally deft, Galchen can do almost anything with next to nothing." Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
"The book is an endearing compilation of social criticism, variously contentious, commonplace, funny and incisive." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Galchen does something more profound than tackle motherhood; she utterly reinvents and reanimates the subject." Christopher Bollen, Interview Magazine
Review
"Galchen is to fiction what Ferran Adrià is to gastronomy, serving up the whimsical, the startling, and the revelatory in the guise of the delightfully familiar." Garth Risk Hallberg, The Millions
Review
"Galchen has a knack for taking a thread and fraying it, so that a sentence never quite ends up where you expect." James Wood
Review
"To read Rivka Galchen is to enter a wonderland where the bizarre and the mundane march in unlikely lockstep." Michael Lindgren, The Washington Post
Synopsis
Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book--a key inspiration for Rivka Galchen's new book--contains a list of "Things That Make One Nervous." And wouldn't the blessed event top almost anyone's list?
Little Labors is a slanted, enchanted literary miscellany. Varying in length from just a sentence or paragraph to a several-page story or essay, Galchen's puzzle pieces assemble into a shining, unpredictable, mordant picture of the ordinary-extraordinary nature of babies and literature. Anecdotal or analytic, each part opens up an odd and tender world of wonder. The 47 Ronin; the black magic of maternal love; babies morphing from pumas to chickens; the quasi-repellent concept of "women writers"; origami-ophilia in Oklahoma as a gateway drug to a lifelong obsession with Japan; discussions of favorite passages from the Heian masterpieces Genji and The Pillow Book; the frightening prevalence of orange as today's new chic color for baby gifts; Frankenstein as a sort of baby; babies gold mines; babies as tiny Godzillas ...
Little Labors-atomized and exploratory, conceptually byzantine and freshly forthright-delights.
About the Author
Rivka Galchen's 2008 first novel Atmospheric Disturbances and her 2014 story collection American Innovations were both New York Times Best Books of the Year. She has received many awards as well as an MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Galchen lives in New York City.