I received a copy of this novel from the publisher on Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I should have known when I saw this book was blurbed by [a:Otessa Moshfegh|14555635|Otessa Moshfegh|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] that I wouldn't like this book. I really disliked Moshfegh's short story collection [b:Homesick for Another World|30079724|Homesick for Another World|Ottessa Moshfegh|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1469408007s/30079724.jpg|50499751] and they were similar to the stories in this collection, although I don't have the same hatred of Pure Hollywood as I do for Homesick. Mostly I'm just wondering about these collections: what is the point?

Sometimes short story collections have themes that draw all the stories together. I honestly couldn't find one here. Other than the flat out disgusting parts. What is it with contemporary authors feeling it necessary to describe penises and genitals and sexual desire in the ugliest of terms and in the most unnecessary of situations?? The person will be sitting on the sofa and will be like "and then I remembered the first time he showed me that secret, red velvet part of him. he grabbed it and said this was for me and stroked himself between my thighs." and then will go back to having a conversation about pie. Like??? completely unnecessary and just disgusting.

I think I liked maybe one story throughout this whole thing called "The Hedges" but one out of maybe 14 just isn't enough. And most of these are short, barely a page long which makes it really, really hard to connect to a story. It's why most of these short stories failed.

All in all, I felt like this book was rushed to market, because the stories in it were not the best. I also feel like the writing in this was sloppy, because in most stories you could barely tell what was going on. I should have known when the rating was so slow before I began this that it was not going to be a good read. I absolutely cannot recommend Pure Hollywood.

Pure Hollywood by Christine Schutt is such a unique collection. Not all of the stories were 100% in my wheelhouse; however, Schutt can write beautiful prose & encapsulate a broad number of themes in a matter of 10 pages with her eccentric stories. Themes of dysfunctional families, motherhood, grief and love are just a few of the topics covered in these 144 pages of experimental literature.
This collection would be great to read on the tube or the train, or a plane flight. It would be great for those wanting to broaden their literary reading tastes and dive into something experimental but still accessible, and this would be good for those who just thoroughly enjoy well written, literary short stories.
I didn’t love it, but that doesn’t mean you won’t!

Pure Hollywood
The story of a 28-year-old actress, Mimi married to a 69-year-old businessman Arnie. Arnie dies of a heart attack and Mimi finds herself in midst of a chaos, created by her own heart. She has difficulty coping up with Arnie’S death. The story also exploits the complicated and almost intimate relationship which she shares with her brother. Mimi tries to revisit her past but faces strange situations which push her further into the darkness.

The Hedges
Dick and Lolly are on a vacation with their two-year-old son. But all is not well. Jonathan stays sick most of the time and Lolly is a terrible mother. She complains about everything and only cares about herself. Dick, on the other hand, tries really hard to be a father and a husband. This is a tragic story written along extremely simple and bland lines. I was surprised by the plot twist and the sudden realization that the situation just went south.

Species of special concern
Nancy cork, a woman passionate about a multitude of things such as the accordion, dogs and her plants-which mean the world to her. Present day scenario-Nancy is bedridden and her husband Cork, tries to take care of plants just like she used to. He is loving, caring and doesn’t want a life without her. But that’s not a choice he can make.

He was ready and however hesitantly he might have added to go back to Boston, he was ready but for the going back itself.The return trip meant driving away in the dark, well before dawn, so as not to see what he was leaving behind in Maine, which was his garden, a pride, a comfort, a habit—an obsession.

A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda’s Garden
Nick and Pie are newly married. They are happy together, or at least that’s what they claim until one day Pie is missing and no one has any clue about her whereabouts. A short story about love, loss and a mysterious man.

The Duchess of Albany
Grieving over her dead husband, the protagonist finds it hard to live with her old, pet dog ‘Pink’. she has a constant fear resonating around her, a fear of outliving everyone. Her children, twins, haven’t visited her in years and they call her once in a while, only to ask her to stop living. But ‘Pink’ is her companion now, in sickness and in health and she doesn’t want to lose him, but on some days, she wants him dead.

Family Man
Mass stands by the window of his cottage and revisits the hard days of the past, and compares it with the life he has built for himself, This is more of a passing thought rather than a story.

Where you live, When you need me?
The story of Ella and murdered babies. I have no idea what happened in between.

Burst Pods, Gone-By, Tangled Aster

And that's where I gave up

The most distinct feature of the author’s writing is the bland way she presents her facts. There’s no engagement with the characters. even if you thought you did, the ending is so flat that it’s very difficult to imagine the complex situations and events. This happens with every story in this anthology. The plots are extremely unpredictable and there’s no justification for anything. Each story looks likes they have been abruptly taken out of the respective characters lives.

This particular bunch is so immature, and childish. I love the author’s knack for creating usual plot twists, and I would definitely read something else by the author before passing a verdict on her or her work. But this collection was more of a drunk teenager trying to write. There’s no beginning, and there’s certainly no conclusion to the stories.

Short story collections are hard: one might think that it's easier to find good short stories than good novels, but I think that the opposite is true. In a novel you get time to build a relationship between the reader and the story, between the reader and your characters. There is time to recover if there's a misstep, or a miscommunication. In a novel, simply because it's a longer medium, you have more space to play around with. Short stories, on the other hand, do not grant the gift of that space. You don't slowly build a world or a character, you throw the reader right in the middle of a story. There's no time to play around with characters or plot, it's a short story. It needs to be fairly concise. I find short stories a lot less forgiving than novels.

The first short story in this collection, "Pure Hollywood", was definitely a story that would have benefited from more space to play around. It tells the story of a young alcoholic widow and her brother, and how they deal with the aftermath of her husband's death. We bounce around between events in the far past, the recent past, an incident after her husband's death, and the present. It's all rather disjointed and affected, and we don't get to spend enough time in any one time frame to really get a feel for what's going on. And maybe that's supposed to mirror Mimi's mental state, but it's very disconcerting from a reader's perspective. As I was reading the story, I found myself wondering if this was originally a novel that she just slashed apart and shoved together as a short story. (Which is not what I want to be thinking while reading a short story.)

The second short story, "The Hedges", was a much more successful short story.  Maybe that's because it was structured like a more traditional short story, and I'm just not ready for experimental short stories, but I found myself connecting to different characters and invested in continuing the plot. (Which is what I want to be experiencing while reading a short story.)

The third short story, "Species of Special Concern", focuses on two men, one husband to a terminally-ill wife, the other infatuated with the terminally-will woman. This one felt half-baked. A good start, definitely, and not lacking in plot. Just lacking in development. It felt more like a lackluster journal entry than an actual short story.

The Verdict:
I see potential with Christine Schutt. I would definitely be interested in reading more of her work. That being said, I wouldn't recommend Pure Hollywood. This collection of short stories felt like the drafts folder of an MFA student's laptop - lots of good beginnings, but still requiring a lot of guidance and a strong editor.

Review to be published on Wrecked My Eyes Reading on 5 Oct 2017

This is the first time I’ve read a book by acclaimed novelist and short story writer Christine Schutt, but she has a disarming and fascinating way of writing about self-consciousness, family and the passage of time. In “Pure Hollywood” the opening title story is also the longest tale in this collection. It’s an impressionistic story of a brother and sister after the sister’s much older husband dies. He was a wealthy famous comedian, but she soon finds she’s shut out of any substantial inheritance and she’s forced to vacate the modernist home she inhabited like an abstract painting. The odd series of events which make up her life feel as if they’ve been crafted in a Hollywood film script so she forms an odd emotional distance from her own sense of being. This is a feeling that recurs throughout many of the stories in this book where the enormity of characters’ loves and losses have a sense of being scripted and so they are abstracted out of the personal. What’s left is the sordid and grimy reality that they inhabit like bemused spectators blinking in the sunlight after spending too long in a dark movie theatre.

Read my full review of Pure Hollywood by Christine Schutt on LonesomeReader

Well-constructed absences in each story. An amazing writer.

Entertaining collection of short stories - most were pretty dark, but really great writing.