Charles Yu

Presents a collection of stories featuring a retail employee who is confronted by a zombie, a computer warrior who leads his fighter band across a virtual landscape, and a company that outsources grief.

Stories

Sorry Please Thank You

Faith Ho 

Dear Sorry Please Thank You,

I'm a bit ambivalent with this rating - I think 3.5 is slightly closer to the truth. But what are ratings anyway? The thing about you is that it's so different that I don't know where to start. 

You're extremely experimental in your writing forms, and that's what I like and don't like about you. One of/the only stories written in standard prose - Standard Loneliness Package - is my favourite; most other stories are those I wish I had the courage and the ingenuity to write. Not all the short stories really made an impact on me (in terms of emotion / thinking) but they were certainly interesting. Certainly I can see that your author genuinely had fun writing you. And I'm glad I read you, because you really pushed me to explore beyond the standard writing forms that's everywhere - and I had fun, too. 

(Sorry for playing favourites but I love your sibling/author's other book, Interior Chinatown. Would recommend checking that novel out for the same kind of experimentalistic writing but consistently brilliantly executed and thought provoking throughout.) 

Your's faithfully

Jordan Peet

"Drawing from both pop culture and science, Charles Yu is an observer of contemporary society, and in Sorry Please Thank You he fills his stories with equal parts humor and insight into the human condition. A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie during the graveyard shift, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a coworker out on a date. A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves, and wizards across a deadly computer-generated landscape, but does he have what it takes to be a hero? A company outsources grief for profit, its slogan: Don't feel like having a bad day? Let someone else have it for you"--From publisher description.

Sorry Please Thank You Stories

Reviews