To Be a Man: 'One of America's most important novelists' (New York Times)

Krauss handles an admirable variety of themes in this collection, among them Jewishness, gender, heredity, the search for happiness and the trajectories of relationships. She writes incredibly well. As with any such collection some stories are better than others, and it’s regrettable that the last one, which provides the collection’s title, is by far the weakest. But the overall score rate is impressive.

This is a dazzling collection of short fiction exploring what it means to be in a couple, and to be a man and a woman in that perplexing relationship and beyond. In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.The way these stories mirror one other and resonate is beautiful, with a balance so finely tuned that the book almost feels like a novel. Echoes ring through stages of life: aging parents and new-born babies; young women’s coming of age and the newfound, somewhat bewildering sexual power that accompanies it; generational gaps and unexpected deliveries of strange new leases on life; mystery and wonder at a life lived or a future waiting to unfold. To Be a Man illuminates with a fierce, unwavering light the forces driving human existence: sex, power, violence, passion, self-discovery, growing older. Profound, poignant, and brilliant, Krauss’s stories are at once startling and deeply moving, but always revealing of all-too-human weakness and strength.This is a deeply thought-provoking and emotionally resonant anthology featuring ten interconnected stories that hold your interest throughout. Exploring those at different stages of their life cycle, there is hope and hopelessness, beauty in sadness and rumination on the all too fleeting transience of life itself, which although nothing new Krauss manages to make it all feel refreshingly original. Beautifully written and sharply observed, Krauss builds on the success of her previous works and illustrates why she is a force to be reckoned with. Simply exquisite. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.

I loved her 'Great House' but this collection of stories doesn't seem to do justice to Krauss's gifts as a writer. Too many of them feel distanced and 'told', and (as is frequently the case with story collections) begin to be a bit samey. Definitely a book to be read in pieces to avoid that sense.That said, 'Switzerland' is wonderful and reminded me all over again of how good Krauss can be: a suggestive tale of desire and power, violence and gender, so much is packed beneath the surface. Some of the other stories feel overly worked out, even a bit overwritten - 'Switzerland' leaves it to the reader to interpret and that worked wonderfully for me.

"To Be a Man" is Nicole Krauss' first collection of short stories and includes some previously published in magazines. There are some strong stories here for sure.The first one in the collection, "Switzerland" is a beautifully-captured commentary on women's coming of age and explorations with sex and power. Another strong story is "End Days" which follows a girl processing the end of her first relationship and the end of her parents' marriage against the backdrop of approaching fires in California. “I am Asleep But My Heart Is Awake”, about a middle aged woman in the aftermath of her father's death who visits his flat in Israel, and "The Husband", about a divorcee's coming to accept the random offering of husband that her widowed mother has taken in, both have surreal elements and tread artfully the line between reality and the imaginary. Other stories have a jarring angsty dystopian backdrop to them, such as "Future Emergencies" and "Amour" and don't render as well the writer's intentions and essentially miss the mark. The title story "To Be a Man" felt a little meandering with some strong sections. "In the Garden" instead was fairly innocuous and forgettable.Overall this is a 3.5 stars review - it made me want to explore more of Krauss' writing, as this is my first reading from her offering, as it may well be that she is a better novelist than short story writer. Thought a mixed bag, throughout my whole reading of the book I had no doubt in my mind: the woman can write.From "Switzerland": "She had gone further than anyone I knew in the game that was never only a game, one that was about power and fear, about the refusal to comply with the vulnerabilities one is born into."From “I am Asleep But My Heart Is Awake”: "That I will get used to stepping over the stranger on my way to the kitchen because that is the way one lives, casually stepping over such things until they are no longer a burden to us, and it is possible to forget them altogether."From "The Husband": "She isn't worried, not really, but because worry has always been the currency of love in her family, rarely does anyone miss an opportunity to express it.""[...] he is finally released, returned to the family the same way he came to them,, only now with the awareness that the people who arrive to us from nowhere and nothing are only ever that: a gift, received without our having known to ask, with only the wonder of how life delivers and delivers."Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.