Portable Curiosities booking
A biting collection of stories from a bold new voice A young girl sees ghosts from her third eye located where her belly button should be A corporate lawyer feels increasingly disconnected from his job in a soulless 1200 storey skyscraper And a one dimensional yellow man steps out from a cinema screen in the hope of leading a three dimensional life but everyone around him is fixated only on the color of his skin Welcome to Portable Curiosities In these dark and often fantastical stories Julie Koh combines absurd humour with searing critiques on modern society proving herself to be one of Australia s most original and daring young writers Portable CuriositiesJulie Koh studied politics and law at the University of Sydney then quit a career in corporate law to pursue writing She is the author of two short story collections Capital Misfits and Portable Curiosities The latter was shortlisted for several literary prizes and led to Julie being named a 2017 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist Her short stories have appeared in publications including the Best Australian Stories in 2014 to 2017 and Best Australian Comedy Writing Outside Australia her fiction has been published in China Malaysia Singapore Japan Ireland and the United States Julie edited BooksActually s Gold Standard co founded the experimental literary collective Kanganoulipo and was a judge for the 2018 S Julie Koh studied politics and law at the University of Sydney then quit a career in corporate law to pursue writing She is the author of two short story collections Capital Misfits and Portable Curiosities The latter was shortlisted for several literary prizes and led to Julie being named a 2017 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist Her short stories have appeared in publications including the Best Australian Stories in 2014 to 2017 and Best Australian Comedy Writing Outside Australia her fiction has been published in China Malaysia Singapore Japan Ireland and the United States Julie edited BooksActually s Gold Standard co founded the experimental literary collective Kanganoulipo and was a judge for the 2018 Stella Prize She is also the librettist for the satirical opera Chop Chef site_link 3 1 2 stars A bit of science fiction a lot of satire and some absurd moments make this an entertaining collection of stories that have quite a bit to say about human relations modern isolation and prejudice While I liked the use of these devices I did find that some of the stories had endings that overdid these particularly the absurdity and meant I was a bit confused about the author s intention I will definitely read her future work as I think Koh has a very entertaining writing style 9780702254048 These are the strangest set of short stories I have read Koh s characters are Chinese in a white world observers angry anti consumerism not attractive not successful and not fitting in But each story is just bizarre absurd and satirical In the main it works Greed ambition and fear of those who are different are all scathingly covered Weird but entertaining 9780702254048 It is rare for an author to write something that is dark and disturbing while at the same time being playful and quick witted and yet that is what Julie Koh has done in her collection of short stories entitled Portable Curiosities published by UQP This is an intellectual commentary on life and human behaviour presented with emotions stripped bare The stories feature a cast of strange and compelling characters who are one thing one minute only to be transformed into something else the next There is a touch of magic of the supernatural of the surreal of the futuristic all grounded in the angst of modern life and the scourges and menaces of progressive civilisation Two of my favourites are The Three Dimensional Yellow Man a startling comment on racism and Two a portrait of an aging man and his slow release on the control over his life I loved this passage Old age when it truly arrived made Ralph spill cups of tea and fall off ladders It put glue in his eyes and made him smell like old coats His knuckles swelled and his skin turned to creased leather marked with inexplicable stains This is a narration and sometimes an analysis of politics superstition sexism racism body image and family dynamics It is edgy with scenes both prophetic and funny it is deeply personal with stories that ring with authenticity 9780702254048 I do enjoy a weird satirical short story collection Koh is certainly a writer to watch 9780702254048 The short story is flexible and open to experiment. EPub Portable curiosities fort and a message thattouches my funnybone or heart 9780702254048 Portable Curiosities is the perfect name for this book because almost every story is truly a curiosity something you can pick up and look at from a number of angles and each time glean something new The stories are all absurdist and satirical a yellow man jumps out of film and abandons his screen life as a 1D plot device to become a three dimensional and complex human being I particularly liked that one I also really enjoyed Cream Reaper about a new artisanal ice cream flavour that has a 50 50 chance of killing you and Sight about a young girl who is forced by her parents to have her third eye located in her belly button removed In others sometimes the allegorical element felt a little obvious but since for the much of time Koh s subjects include sexism and racism I didn t really mind Because these are important things to talk about and much of the world still doesn t get that. Portable Curiosities pdf drive The writing style is excellent very clean sharp spare and declarative but exceptionally powerful at the same time In fact the writing style was the main reason I kept returning to this book I suppose the only reason I didn t give this a four or even a five star rating was because it didn t really grab me emotionally that is it didn t get me in the guts I though I enjoyed it on an intellectual level Will definitely continue to read this author 9780702254048 She can nurse us or she can crush us The power is all hers 9780702254048 I think this is my favourite book I ve read in 2017 so far Julie Koh is whipsmart clever funny and the perfect amount of weird These stories are strange AF They hit on so many real world issues like patriarchy The Fantastic Breasts consumerism Cream Reaper and racism The Three Dimensional Yellow Man She reimagines Australia and the world in darkly funny and exceptionally strange ways but the connection to our reality is concrete and as a reader you are able to pin it down The last story in the collection The Fat Girl in History is especially good It is a work of autofiction a term I had not heard of before which seems ridiculous seeing as I ve spent the last four years of my life in a Creative Professional Writing degree I have been learning about all of the wrong things because I now want to write a piece of autofiction Okay we may have touched on writing where the fictional bleeds into the autobiographical and vice versa but it was always referred to as creative non fiction Autofiction is a much better term and I am adopting it Koh s prose is sparse somewhat detached and effortlessly readable Nearly every story starts with one sentence in its own paragraph which sets the tone perfectly for the story to come There are nods to it having been called bland which baffles me because it is quite the opposite It is evocative without being over the top and the mild detachment works well to engage the reader with stories that could be too strange to relate to. Book Portable curiosities definition My bitter feminist heart appreciated her comments on The Difficulties of an Objectified Existence in a Patriarchal World in The Fantastic Breasts I loved the absurdity of a cat cafe seceding from the Australian nation in Slow Death in Cat Cafe and the mind numbing crazy scary future world of Civility Place I enjoyed the unique ways Inquiry Regarding the Recent Goings On in the Woods and Cream Reaper were delivered by an inquiry report and journalistic feature respectively Satirist Rising the story from which the title is drawn is an intersting look into the dying arts of the future I loved every story in the book even the ones I haven t mentioned in this brief review forgive me but my two favourite would have to be the opening story Sight and The Three Dimensional Yellow Man I love Sight for its strangeness and its heart for the little lizard boy and the Tattoo Man for the ghosts and the third eye It s an exceptional story I love The Three Dimensional Yellow Man for its portrayal of racism in Australia The entire story is so clever and nuanced. Book Portable curiosities definition This has to be the best short story collection I ve read Often I ll pick up a collection and love a few stories but find the rest fall kind of flat I loved every story in this book There was not one that I wanted to skip over There was not one that I didn t enjoy Some were quite short like The Procession while others were quite long like Two This variation worked well for continued reading I read this book in two sittings Sight on its own and then the entire rest of the book the next time I picked it up There are little things that turn up than once references of glass towers and neorealism and others I didn t jot down when I noticed them pop up Overall I adored this book These stories are the kinds of stories you could read over and over and find something new in each time Beyond the absurdity and strangeness are a lot of themes and questions to think on and unpack This is an intelligent beautifully written weird AF collection of stories and I love every word of it 9780702254048 It s great to read a collection of stories by an Australian writer doing something different from the usual realist stuff these are mostly absurdist satirical stories that work to varying degrees Some felt a bit obvious to me while others were weird enough to surprise Funnier than An Astronaut s Life but without the power that Dechian brought to her skewed takes on reality 9780702254048 Traditions of the surreal are as culturally coded as any other literary aesthetic We imagine the gardens in Alice of Wonderland in Victorian English as much as we place Japanese ghost stories in the perspectives of the onis and the yokais As modern writers we write completely in the background of what was once written while trying to remain ourselves It is difficult to carve an intrinsically unique space In the twelve stories of Portable Curiosities Julie Koh combines the surreal the imagist and the undefined to create a singular hybrid voice A portion of this review was published as part of a greater collective essay at 3AM Magazine 9780702254048
| Portable Curiosities By Julie Koh |
| 0702254045 |
| 9780702254048 |
| English |
| 256 |
| Paperback |
| Book Portable curiosities definition |
| Book Portable curiosities greeting |
| Book Portable curiosities synonym |
| Book Portable curiosities shop |
| Book Portable curiosities expo |
| Book Portable curiosities fort |
| Book Portable curiosities store |
| Portable Curiosities book |
| Portable Curiosities booking |
| Portable Curiosities booklet |
| Portable Curiosities booker |
| PDF Portable curiosities |
| PDF Portable curiosities definition |
| PDF Portable curiosities greeting |
| PDF Portable curiosities synonym |