Retrieve More Of This World Or Maybe Another Author Barb Johnson Available As Textbook

is a stunning work of fiction, I loved every sentence, even the painfully honest ones, I especially appreciated Johnsons technique of using inanimate objects in the scene to describe the emotional state of the characters and show how they are shaped by their environment.
The stories remind me of Breece DJ Pancakes writing in how they so thoroughly depict the emotional state of an entire community/city.
Its easy to understand the characters, even if the circumstances of their life are foreign to the reader, The only sad part is learning that Johnson hasnt written anything else for me to read next, No happy endings here. One of the best books I've read all year, Two of the best stories I've ever read, Gorgeous language! This is a killer collection from writer who infuses wisdom into her stunning prose, and manages, somehow, to create characters who break into our hearts and remind us of the need for generosity in an all too cold world.
There are so many riches in the writing and in these stories that I had to set the book on my lap from time to time just to catch my breath and soak it all in! From Pudge's homemade valentine heart, Delia's gift shoes, Luis' catechism book, Chuck's "blackblack" eyes and the lines on the back of Maggie's neck: Barb Johnson's 'people' and the sweet sadness of the things they bring with them will stay with me for a long time to come.
"Love is not trouble. It is all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given, "



So says Delia Delahoussaye, one of the main characters in Barb Johnson's somewhat bleak but beautifully written story collection, More of This World or Maybe Another.
Spanning more thanyears, following the lives of four friends and relatives in New Orleans, the interconnected stories in this collection are about the sometimes redemptive and sometimes destructive power of love, of the chances we take that sometimes succeed and sometimes fail.
In "Keeping Her Difficult Balance," Delia struggles between living the life she is supposed to and the one she wants, "Killer Heart" follows Delia's brother, Dooley, as his life changes with just one splitsecond decision, In "What Was Left," Delia's friend, Pudge, who survived a traumatic childhood, is trying to find his way to rebuilding his life, and in "St.
Luis of Palmyra," Pudge's son, Luis, invents his own saint as a way of escaping the life around him,



Johnson is a magnificent writer, She truly loves these characters, which makes you feel the same way about them, While I didn't love every story in the collection, and at least one was gratuitously cruel I just skimmed that story, I'm still thinking about this book and wondering what will happen to the characters next.
I believe Johnson hit her mark with her first book I eagerly await what will come next for her, Reading Barb Johnson's debut collection is like catching up on old friends after high school, then after college, then when you're in your lates.
Within thestories that is what we get as we follow four friends in the back streets of New Orleans as they try to deal with life and its discontents.


When readers of short fiction think of the working class and their struggles, they are apt to think of Raymond Carver, whose tales of poverty pinched at the back of your brain with an utter sadness and grittiness.
While Johnson's stories does follow the disenfranchised and forgotten, the difference is that her stories teeter on hope, All of her characters are in the space between giving up, yet not quite, The title of the collection captures it all: More of This World Or Maybe Another or more of what we have now or maybe it might change.
Her characters are hopeful in that way, seeing towards the future while living lives of drug addicts, lovers with hearts broken, and guilty consciousness of not being able to provide.
Johnson's stories are about survivors not after the fact, but during the tumultuous events of their lives: we are seeing survivors surviving with sparkles of hope in their eyes.
Johnson's worldview presented here is refreshing,

Her language is also remarkably her own as she skillfully maneuvers with different people and different personalities: like Delia, who struggles with grasping a foothold in this world that she is never quite used to, but was always there in front of her there's Pudge, haunted by days of ridiculed in childhood, events which follows him attacking his manhood there's Dooley who can't really seem to understand the world around him.
All these characters and more tell stories that are heartbreaking, yet at the same time very hopeful,

Again, refreshing.

Indeed, More of This World or Maybe Another, is a very refreshing collection of interconnecting stories that reads more like a novelinstories than simply a story collection.
To read this is to see the characters grow fully in a world gorgeously painted in all of his beauty and ugliness, Barb Johnson is surely a writer to keep an eye on, With already several wins in the literary world, Johnson is indeed someone we expect to hear from for quite a while, Super depressing with all the child abuse, but lovely writing, I liked how the stories were interlinked and referenced each other, but could have done with less repeated information, Wish there had been more of a wrap up in the end, Every story in this collection is highly enjoyable, even when it's depressing, About halfway through the stories, I started to think: I really love being here, in this big, bad, beautiful New Orleans, This feels like the most complete cycle of linked stories that I've read in a long time, Each character is fully developed and barring one deeply sympathetic, even when they make dreadful choices, These are peopleand storiesthat

you find yourself rooting for, I'm hoping this is the start of a long career for Miss Johnson, “There's real trouble in the world, The kind that can't be fixed, The kind we lie awake keeping vigil against, Love is not trouble. It's all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given, ”

The story of acceptance, forgiveness and moving on with who it is your heart desires, and how to find it within your heart to love a monster.
Delia, fighting the feelings she's harbored within herself for so many years, while trying to maintain feelings nonexistence to her fiance, Calvin, a childhood friend growing up.
Falling out of love, while lust helps guide her heart stings to Maggie, a beautiful girl posed with the dancer's body and movement, who seemingly stolen her heart at a single Fish Fry.
To Pudge, bullied for years upon years as being the Fat Kid with Titties, who moved on with the Help of Big Luce, while fighting the urges to destroy the life his mother fell into with Junior, her abusive boyfriend who helped feed Deysi the lies and fears of a strike to her timid flesh.
Falling down the embankment is Dooley, forced to slaughter his beloved pig while his father is away in the service and his mother still reeling from the death of her baby girl a month prior.
Following close behind Belinda, a baby sister abused by an abusive father figure, who turned to psychology to fix herself, While healing is a painful road, Dooley learns to accept his life he loved is dead, along with his beautiful three year old daughter who turned out to not be his at all.
She died of heatstroke left within the truck during a blistering day while napping, Dooley determined to prove to his newly separated wife he could provide for the daughter he always believed was his.
Leaving for a mere fifteen minutes to buy a car seat, he returns to find an ambulance arrived and his life torn apart at the seams.
His wife blaming him for her death, claiming he did it out of revenge for the infidelity, To the life of Maggie and Delia, twenty years after Maggie cheated, planning an anniversary while trying to forget the incidents that almost ruined them forever.
While the cracks become more and move transparent, the lives get shaped and reshaped in guilt, love, honor, and tragedy, When did I fall in love with this book On page, the line "A winecolored birthmark follows the curve of Maggie's rib, It's shaped like, like Delia doesn't know what because she's trying not to stare at the private swatch of skin, " This line is a perfect example of the sheer honesty of this story story collection, I loved how the author assembled the collection and how all nine stories intermingled around the same cast of characters, New stories by a writer from Louisiana, Linked stories about a group of people in New Orleans, part coming of age, part living the adult life, Each story crystalizes around a moment of choosing or living with the choice that's made, Painful and beautiful. If you love short stories that create worlds as expansive as a novel, this books for you, Linked stories about a cast of characters in ungentrified New Orleans each one is surprising, funny, and bracingly well written, Johnson never takes a predictable turn or an easy out, These stories are big hearted and unsentimental, exploring how a community comes together, attempting to connect and care for each other in the face of tremendous odds.
As one character puts it, “Theres real trouble in the world, The kind that cant be fixed, The kind we lie awake keeping vigil against, Love is not trouble. It is all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time weve been given, ” There was something about this book that reminded me of Fannie Flagg in the sense that the stories mingled around a community of characters from the south, some queer, some not.
Some stories just dripped with heartbreak, Of the nine stories, only two fell flat, As a writer, Barb Johnson writes lines that often jump off the page, When she talks about growing up in a stifling small town: “Everyone knew everyone, and it already had been decided three generations ago which people you'd invite to your house and which people you'd never get to know.
” Or, when she talks about love: “There is real trouble in the world, The kind that cant be fixed, The kind we lie awake keeping vigil against, Love is not trouble. It is all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given, ” This is the best collection of stories I've read in a couple years, On average, I'd say one in fifty stories is worth rereading or recommending, and there are three here: "What Was Left," "Titty Baby," and "St.
Luis of Palmyra," the last two pretty close to perfect,

There are weak spots in the collection the four stories before "Titty Baby" too frequently feel like "fiction," made up of moods and moves you've read and forgotten before.
The first three stories are especially guilty of false notes, missteps, received language, and narrative manipulations, If the collection weren't connected by common characters, I'd say to skip these first three and "Killer Heart", which almost don't feel written by the same sure hand as "Titty Baby," etc.


As for the interconnectedness of the storiesan approach I usually hateit's a strength here, There is a lot of space and time between the stories, which prevents the recurrence of characters from feeling lazy, artsy, or cheesy, as is so often the case in linked collections.
Johnson also somehow manages to set a book in New Orleans without offending my sensibilities of life hereI always assume that a book set in New Orleans will be a horror because they all are.
For a typical sampling of how crappy writing about the city usually is, even and especially by natives, see the Oxford American issue on the threeyear anniversary of Katrina.
Johnson's book slipped right past these two very strong prejudices and won me over,


Just a great collection of linked stories, It always follows the right character at the right moment of their interwoven lives, and I really enjoyed reading one story per sitting over a few days.


"Titty Baby" is a killer short story, Oh Pudge.

It also feels pretty true to New Orleans, without being That New Orleans collection, It was interesting to read in the afterword of my edition that the author did a lot of this writing from a flooded porch postKatrinathat without mentioning the storm in these stories, she used them to help her survive it.
But the stories are great, anyway, Highly recommend this collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer but this book does what Olive Kitteridge tried to do TEN times better, The writing is beautiful, the stories fluid and the tone is exceptional, This is truly an amazing work, This is a very intimate and loving collection of short stories centered around the families that live near Bubbles Laundromat in Gremilion, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans.
Major themes of weather, water, and racism take a backseat in these tales and Barb Johnson reveals the inner lives of her characters with spare and at the same time lyrical language.
Matriarchs of the community, Big Luce and Aunt Alma, who own the laundromat, hover in the background in these tales while the younger generations, male and female, struggle to find their way among the minefields of alcoholism, crime and drug addiction, mental illness, sexual abuse, and family tragedies.
At the calm center are Delia, from the neighborhood, and Maggie, a bohemian transplant, who run the laundromat and create a family with one another and whose love is a sustaining force in the neighborhood.
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