185
Julie Hecht
Happy Trails to You
April 25, 2018
Comments.. 554
Happy Trails to You Julie Hecht s stories first appeared in The New Yorker chronicling her unnamed photographer narrator s strategies for surviving civilization s decline herbal remedies macrobiotics a bit of Xanax Th
Julie Hecht s stories first appeared in The New Yorker, chronicling her unnamed photographer narrator s strategies for surviving civilization s decline herbal remedies, macrobiotics, a bit of Xanax.The uniquely eccentric narrator reappears in Happy Trails to You and recounts her perplexed engagements with our society and the larger world whether she s attempting to wJulie Hecht s stories first appeared in The New Yorker, chronicling her unnamed photographer narrator s strategies for surviving civilization s decline herbal remedies, macrobiotics, a bit of Xanax.The uniquely eccentric narrator reappears in Happy Trails to You and recounts her perplexed engagements with our society and the larger world whether she s attempting to withdraw money from a bank machine, worrying about Paul McCartney, or seeking a nonexistent place of calm on Nantucket, where nail guns and chain saws have replaced the sounds of birds singing Appalled by life in our times, the narrator recounts innumerable artifacts from a now vanished America civility, idealism, Elvis Presley, well made appliances She is also exquisitely attuned to the absurdities of our culture her acute observations illuminate every subject, from the dangers of microwave ovens to the disappearing ozone layer.
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Free Read [Contemporary Book] õ Happy Trails to You - by Julie Hecht ✓
185
Julie Hecht
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Title:
Free Read [Contemporary Book] õ Happy Trails to You - by Julie Hecht ✓
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Published :2018-04-25T00:11:07+00:00
This hilarious take on modern life contains stories in which a vegan, hyper-paranoid, misanthropic, anxiety-ridden woman tries and fails to come to grips with the world around her. The reader at once feels for her and wants to throttle her (our protagonist) for her holier than thou goody two shoes attitude.
Long before Sedaris, there was Hecht. 'Nuff said. So delightful to read her sardonic, neurotic, slouchy prose again.
I have Julie Hecht's first collection of stories, Do The Windows Open?, about five times, and each time I end up laughing out loud; this volume is just as funny and quirky, though a little bit darker and sadder, since the heroine (an incredibly neurotic woman who sometimes, embarrassingly, reminds me of myself) is older and seems more isolated, and lonelier, than she did in DTWO. Julie Hecht's sense of humor is of the "love it or hate it" variety, I think; I happen to love it, but have shared th [...]
Julie Hecht's short story collection describes in first person, and with self-conscious humor, a mid-life, upper middle class woman in rural Connecticut, conflicted between her idealistic concerns and the social life of those around her. Told with great hilarity in places, and a general sense of absurdity throughout, my lasting impression is one of empathy for her self-inflicted angst, some of which I share.
Wonderful, hilarious, oddly appealing short stories. Can't explain why I love her work so much, but I do.
If I could eat this book, I would.
This is a small collection of interwoven short stories – quirky, often funny, sometimes sad. It’s set during the Bush/Cheney years. The narrator is the same in each story, a vegan photographer with definite political and nutritional opinions, living in Nantucket. She’s obsessed with trying to keep poisons out of her life, and frequently other people are the source of these poisons – but she still wants to be friends. This isn’t easy. Sometimes I found this a little tedious, especially [...]
Bizarre. That would be the one word that I would use to describe this book. The randomness, the paranoia, the self-righteousness - it all threw me for a loop. I just can't believe that at some points I actually was identifying with the main character because she is such a liberal freak of nature. The nameless character has anxiety attacks because the whole nation found out about good ol' Bill Clinton's scandal. And by the sound of it our nation is hopelessly and irrevocably becoming less intelli [...]
"I'd recently heard a Ukrainian or Russian--a big, Soviet-looking expert--explaining how the poisoned Prime Minister of the Ukraine could have eaten soup without tasting the dioxin that almost killed him and did disfigure his face. 'It was thick borscht--with garlic, onions, cabbage, turnips, kale,' the expert said in his thick accent, which made the soup sound even thicker. The explanation was that with all these healthful, strong flavors of vegetables, with spices, too, the Prime Minister migh [...]
i LOVED do the windows open but this book left me feeling like julie hecht was doing a julie hecht imitation. many said they found the character irritating in her previous book, but i actually found her funny & "relatable" (whatever that says about me.) but in this book, i found her grating and offensive. maybe it's me who's changed. but there was a big difference to me in someone talking about their anxiety about the LIE - oh, boy, can i relate - and someone talking about their annoyance th [...]
I had a very hard time connecting to this collection of short stories until the very end. I found them meandering and without an emotional core that I could find (except a sense of the loneliness and isolation, which was present throughout the book but only really apparent to me in the last two stories in the collection). These are not poorly written stories, however, justry in the reading.
Good writing, but I'd recommend reading the other books first, the narrator doesn't seem quite as neurotically quirky here. Also, it helps to be familiar with Nantucket (where I am writing this review as it turns out).
I would not compare Hecht to Sedaris. This book was okay but slow. Quirky, yes, but not funny, more sad. But not sad enougha little was fine, the whole book of stories with the same character tired me.
Major mixed feelings about this one. Can't really rate it.
Dry and funny, and surprisingly disturbing, the narrator of these stories becomes more interesting with each turn of the page.
She's one of my fave writers, but this book is a mediocre imitation of "Do The Windows Open?"
Picked this up at hte library too. It's always nice to have a book of short stories sitting around.easy to pick it up and read one at a time, here and there. This looked promising.
I think Julie Hecht's neurotic narrator is one of the funniest voices in fiction.
I liked the book.
to be clear, she does not get points with me for being a mysophobe
I found it hard to rate this book on one hand I really like the writing style of the author. On the other hand she can often come off very self righteous and annoying at times.
The stories all struck the same note--a good note, a lingering note--but I'd have liked a bit more variety.
I was ready to give this 3 stars until the last sentence, to which I could totally, 100% relate.
more weird funny truths and neuroses