In The Oregonian, writer Kirsten Rian has high praise for Margaret Malone's People Like You:
I don't know a single middle-aged person who can say: my life went exactly as planned. And neither can the characters in Portland writer Margaret Malone's stunningly composed debut collection of short stories People Like You.
The nine stories are deeply intimate, isolated moments, uncomfortable moments inside the heads of ordinary, everyday, scared, hopeful, disappointed, cynical, rejected, memory-filled people like us. And indeed the double-meaning title of the book and first story folds itself well in both interpretations. The characters in this book want to be liked by others and they want to figure out how to like themselves. They try to find connection and acceptance, and sometimes they find it in isolated moments, in the incidental and the mundane that are a life.
While a collection of short stories, the book reads masterfully as a whole, in part because the characters in the first story appear in the final and one other story, creating a continuum of storyline that threads its way throughout the book.
This attention to construction plays out on a sentence-level as well. Malone doesn't hide behind metaphor and over-wrought description. And because she doesn't overuse imagery when it does appear it stands out...
The stories are crafted without feeling crafted, they tow the reader through, even though most of them are close-looking at weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and disappointments. Yet they are satisfying, perhaps because all this is familiar, and perhaps because the little victories are present. ...See the full review HERE. People Like You is in stock at Atelier26 Books. Orders ship within 24 hours.
Upcoming Malone appearances:
Saturday Nov. 7: Wordstock (at Portland Art Museum). Malone will read in the American Art Gallery at 10:30 a.m.
Saturday Nov. 21: Atelier26 Books presents The People Like You Book Launch Celebration, with special musical guests and a reading/booksigning by Malone. Ford Food & Drink, 2505 SE Division. 6:30-10:00 p.m.
Sunday Nov.22: Malone appears at Powell's City of Books, in conversation with Lidia Yuknavitch. 7:30 p.m.
Have you seen the People Like You book trailer by director Brian Padian?
