Men Giving Money, Women Yelling: Intersecting Stories

by Alice Mattison

Book Overview

Men Giving Money, Women Yelling is Alice Mattisons latest collection in which the characters lives are told in tales that overlap or echo one another. At the center of the stories is Denny Ring, a young man nobody quite knows. Other characters include John Corey, a contractor who renovates old houses in New Haven, Connecticut; his younger brother Eugene, a volunteer at a soup kitchen; and his older brother Cameron, who is a lawyer specializing in...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688161065
• ISBN13: 9780688161064
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant

The best of dozens of short story collections I have read in recent years. The subtitle "Intersecting Stories" doesn't do justice to the work as a whole. I would call it a novel, many (though not all) of whose chapters could stand alone as stories. Works as a whole -- an important work of fiction by a superb writer.

Similar to Reading about Everyone in a Small Town

What a gem of a collection!! I was completely engaged in this group of short stories about the very interesting and yet ordinary people of this CT town. I think what is so lacking in writing these days is the description and action of normal people. There is a unity in everyday activities that the correct author can make poetic. Ms. Mattison describes how people are and can be in real life. I loved this compilation!

Thank God for Book Reviews

Thank God for book reviews! If I hadn't read a NY Times review of Alice Mattison's MEN GIVING MONEY, WOMEN YELLING, it is unlikely I would ever have discovered this engaging collection of interconnected stories. The characters appear to be leading ordinary lives but Mattison's insights are definately extraordinary. Beginning each new story, the reader is aware that the previous characters will appear in some way in the forthcoming stories, making the collection a delightful puzzle.

Sad themes, yet fun to read

I never would have picked up this book on my own. My book club read it and the average rating was an eight. While I was reading it, I thought that it was going to be a flat discussion once the club met. Boy was I wrong!! I would definitely recommend it to book clubs. We all enjoyed discussing the book and most of us grew to appreciate it even more after our discussion. Alice Mattison did a wonderful job intersecting these 15 stories. I loved how the characters kept reappearing. After finishing the book, for days I kept thinking about the characters. I wanted more and didn't want it to end.

It's so good!

The first story in this collection ran in The New Yorker a couple of years ago, and I liked it so much I clipped it out and showed it to all my friends. The book is great - it somehow makes you happy to be reading it, even though some of the themes are sad. Mattison gives the characters a kind of universal daffyness that is present in modern life, but unheralded. And the linking is done really well, making it read more like a novel than like stories.