Soft Maniacs: Stories

by Maggie Estep

Book Overview

From Maggie Estep, heralded author of Diary of an Emotional Idiot, comes this darkly funny collection of inter-connected stories. Jody Ray, a young psychiatrist, conceals her own nymphomania -- and a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684863332
• ISBN13: 9780684863337
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Maggie Does it Again!

Maggie fans will not be let down by her latest book, "Soft Maniacs." It is a collection of short stories with characters that cross over from story to story. Most of the stories are about 20-30 somethings in New York City; however, Maggie does branch out into carnival workers. As with her previous book, "Diary of an Emotional Idiot," Maggie's recent work is full of unusual people described with Maggie's irrististable wit. Fans of Maggie's earlier work will likely notice a hint of maturity which only serves to strengthen her latest work.

A weekend of escapist fiction

I'm a fast reader, and I've been known to devour books in less than a single day, but I think I set a new record when I read "Soft Maniacs." Faster isn't necessarily better, but I couldn't put the thing down. I met Maggie (Miss Estep) on a Friday night (on which she gave me a copy of her first book). By her book signing the next day, I had read through "Diary of an Emotional Idiot" once and was almost half-way through it a second time. I bought "Soft Maniacs" that Saturday, and have read it 4 times since then. It's a fantastic series of intertwined short-stories that you won't regret reading.

Runs the gamut between hysterical and heartbreaking

Few books can elicit outright belly-laughs as well as gather empathetic tears. Estep paints her characters so well and each has a distinctive and original voice, it's breathtaking in it's scope and fluidity. Essentially a "small world, isn't it?" collection following two women, this book really delves fiercely into the male psyche as all the stories are written from a male character's point of view - and it's spot on. These people live and breathe within these pages, in vivid reality, and Maggie Estep proves herself to be one of the essential artists of our times. And she'll also beat your Mom at Scrabble - she's good with words; she's a poet, remember?

Fierce and Fascinating

This book is a treasure - I loved the way the stories were related and how you'd travel along a story and it would turn completely into something you had not expected, some of the lines were so hilarious I had to highlight them so I can repeat them to friends. And I'm still thinking about Jody and trying to figure her out. All in all this is a very cool read.

Beautiful Reality

Love isn't always like a Hallmark card. No more than Family Life is always like a Rockwell painting. Birthdays aren't always happy, and families aren't always made from relatives.If anything, Life is more like an Arbus photograph: strange and vulnerable and damaged and beautiful all at once. Human beings are imperfect creatures. And, in spite of this, we somehow manage to connect with each other. In SOFT MANIACS, Maggie Estep captures this reality brilliantly. Comprised of nine intertwined stories which show two women - Jody, a sexually insatiable and unstable psychiatrist, and Katie, an assistant in forensic psychology who spent her youth traveling with her lion-tamer father and the circus - as shown through the eyes of the men who have loved them, this collection is like GEEK LOVE from the inside. Instead of being physically different, the characters in SOFT MANIACS could easily be called Freaks of the Heart. Just like real humans.This book is beautiful and resonant and will utterly disappoint anyone searching for a tenderly-narrated Rockwell-esque vision of love at the end of the century. But those of us who live in Reality will see the reflection of the darkest and most profound secrets of our hearts, and how in spite of our imperfections, we still have hope.