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Temptation: A User’s Guide
Variations and fugues on the theme of obsession
Vesna Main disturbs our self-image as educated, reasonable and ironic people who read modernist fiction. She disturbs us because we recognise ourselves in her obsessive and bloody-minded characters as they are pushed to the extreme. But they are only too human and seek love, just like us.
This is a collection of twenty short stories of different lengths and written in a variety of styles. Main writes about characters whose passion borders on obsession and who are seeking love and companionship but are doomed to remain alone, with their sense of personal failure as the only company.
Vesna Main disturbs our self-image as educated, reasonable and ironic people who read modernist fiction. She disturbs us because we recognise ourselves in her obsessive and bloody-minded characters as they are pushed to the extreme. But they are only too human and seek love, just like us.
This is a collection of twenty short stories of different lengths and written in a variety of styles. Main writes about characters whose passion borders on obsession and who are seeking love and companionship but are doomed to remain alone, with their sense of personal failure as the only company.
- GenresShort Stories
214 pages, Paperback
Published January 15, 2018
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56 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 5, 2018
Temptation. A Users Guide, is a collection of short stories of great intensity, sometimes because the character is in a very difficult situation, or because of their attention to minutiae, often delivered in blocks of relentless observational prose.
Many of the stories give off an air that something is not quite right. A feeling which grows as the story progresses. There is mostly a sense, through words and actions, of many of the narrators being set apart from society for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s because they don’t fit in, choose to isolate themselves from it, or who are viewing other people’s lives at a distance, considering how they might be able to connect with them, but never do.
Vesna Main’s experimentation with prose form and a cast of disquieting characters and situations might not suit a reader who is not ready to be challenged. But this collection is worth absorbing and contemplating because she is very skilled in making you, the reader, see the world is a place in which an individual has to work very hard to successfully steer their way through it. The writing also highlights a world which deserves close observation for the richness in it.
Main is excellent at building suspense, which is very difficult to achieve effectively in a short story. The successful development and maintenance of suspense is the difference between plucking delicately on a string to set up a subtle, subliminal vibration of psychological discomfort, rather than sawing on it to create a jarring noise which just irritates. Main is a writer who works subliminal for all it’s worth.
Temptation. A User’s Guide is one for the bookshelf to refer to with regards to pushing a reader and writer out of their comfort zone and finding something new to think about and work with.
Temptation. A User’s Guide was courtesy of Salt Publishing.
To gain a better insight into Vesna's Main's writing here is a link to an interview with her:
https://strangealliances.wordpress.co...
Many of the stories give off an air that something is not quite right. A feeling which grows as the story progresses. There is mostly a sense, through words and actions, of many of the narrators being set apart from society for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s because they don’t fit in, choose to isolate themselves from it, or who are viewing other people’s lives at a distance, considering how they might be able to connect with them, but never do.
Vesna Main’s experimentation with prose form and a cast of disquieting characters and situations might not suit a reader who is not ready to be challenged. But this collection is worth absorbing and contemplating because she is very skilled in making you, the reader, see the world is a place in which an individual has to work very hard to successfully steer their way through it. The writing also highlights a world which deserves close observation for the richness in it.
Main is excellent at building suspense, which is very difficult to achieve effectively in a short story. The successful development and maintenance of suspense is the difference between plucking delicately on a string to set up a subtle, subliminal vibration of psychological discomfort, rather than sawing on it to create a jarring noise which just irritates. Main is a writer who works subliminal for all it’s worth.
Temptation. A User’s Guide is one for the bookshelf to refer to with regards to pushing a reader and writer out of their comfort zone and finding something new to think about and work with.
Temptation. A User’s Guide was courtesy of Salt Publishing.
To gain a better insight into Vesna's Main's writing here is a link to an interview with her:
https://strangealliances.wordpress.co...
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April 19, 2018Vesna Main's short stories are unlike anything I have read before. I was occasionally reminded of Beckett and Pinter - though for me these stories lacked the dramatic tension of the plays. They vary in length from a page or two to interminable. Well, those long ones do actually end eventually but often without a conclusion.
These stories are irritating, bewildering, annoying, bemusing, challenging and enraging. The thing is, that appears to be the intention. They prod you and poke you and generally disturb you until you want to fling them aside in a fit of pique.
I made the mistake of reading some of these before bed - something I would strongly advise against as I was kept awake trying to puzzle out what they were about and what they might mean. Or, if they weren't about anything, what the fact that they weren't about anything might mean. I had to stop reading a couple of the more repetitive ones for the sake of my sanity.
Many of the stories feature people who are obsessed with something, though often that something is not obvious. Some seem obsessed with overthinking and others with having no particular thoughts at all. The characters are not particularly rounded and often there is little or no description or dialogue. Indeed, these pieces conform to no conventions of short fiction at all. Now, this is not to say they are bad. Or badly written. If the intention is to frustrate the reader and provoke a reaction, they are very good indeed.
Now, I expect some people will think these are rubbish and that the publishers are suffering from Emperor's New Clothes syndrome. Being the sophisticated consumer of modern fiction that I am, however, (or that I imagine myself to be) I am determined to avoid falling into this trap. I can't honestly say I enjoyed them and they certainly weren't relaxing - but then neither is Picasso's Guernica.
Anyway, you will have to read them yourself in order to decide whether they are good or not. Go on - give them a go. I dare you.
These stories are irritating, bewildering, annoying, bemusing, challenging and enraging. The thing is, that appears to be the intention. They prod you and poke you and generally disturb you until you want to fling them aside in a fit of pique.
I made the mistake of reading some of these before bed - something I would strongly advise against as I was kept awake trying to puzzle out what they were about and what they might mean. Or, if they weren't about anything, what the fact that they weren't about anything might mean. I had to stop reading a couple of the more repetitive ones for the sake of my sanity.
Many of the stories feature people who are obsessed with something, though often that something is not obvious. Some seem obsessed with overthinking and others with having no particular thoughts at all. The characters are not particularly rounded and often there is little or no description or dialogue. Indeed, these pieces conform to no conventions of short fiction at all. Now, this is not to say they are bad. Or badly written. If the intention is to frustrate the reader and provoke a reaction, they are very good indeed.
Now, I expect some people will think these are rubbish and that the publishers are suffering from Emperor's New Clothes syndrome. Being the sophisticated consumer of modern fiction that I am, however, (or that I imagine myself to be) I am determined to avoid falling into this trap. I can't honestly say I enjoyed them and they certainly weren't relaxing - but then neither is Picasso's Guernica.
Anyway, you will have to read them yourself in order to decide whether they are good or not. Go on - give them a go. I dare you.
December 28, 2020
I love how this book narrates stories beautifully ❤️
February 18, 2023
Interesting and unusual collection of short stories.
Still wonder, what those five words were.
Still wonder, what those five words were.
January 17, 2020
This is a varied collection of short stories, some auto-fictional and all interesting in different ways. They made me want to read her novel, although I have not done so yet. I made some very brief notes on these stories:
Safe - powerful, emotional, has coda later in the book
To Complete the Thought - meandering, inconclusive (not read Max Lab, if author)
Baking for Love - disturbing
Telling Tales - annihilated perspective?
He Said Those Five Words - I imagined some very silly ones
Shakespeare on the Buses - comment on Brexit Britain
Safe - powerful, emotional, has coda later in the book
To Complete the Thought - meandering, inconclusive (not read Max Lab, if author)
Baking for Love - disturbing
Telling Tales - annihilated perspective?
He Said Those Five Words - I imagined some very silly ones
Shakespeare on the Buses - comment on Brexit Britain
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews