The title of Rivka Galchen’s short story collection American Innovations is significant. Most, if not all, of the ten stories are takes on classics: James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, Borges’ “The Aleph”, Gogol’s “The Nose”, etc. Ergo innovations. These are updates, American-set riffs and reboots of canonical stories.
All of the stories are idiosyncratic and convey distinctly feminine perspectives (all of the protagonists in the collection are women or girls). The narrative voice is consistently eccentric, even loopy. Each protagonist seems inescapably entangled within her own off-kilter perspective. Each is an oddball. A few of the stories are brilliant and memorable. Continue reading “Review of Rivka Galchen’s story collection ‘American Innovations’ | Oct 28, 2014”