Review: "Emerald City" by Jennifer Egan

Out of all the collections I have read this year, this one, Emerald City by Jennifer Egan, has to be the least impressive. And since it comes from a writer as amazing as Egan, who has shown recently to be a powerhouse writer more than deserving of her title as a literary celebrity makes this all the more disappointing. Egan’s last two novels The Keep and A Visit from the Goon Squad were simply astounding in the way she turns storytelling on its head and is able to make the story more rich and interesting. The Keep combined a gothic setting and thriller-like elements in a way that left me spellbound, and A Visit from the Goon Squad used linked narratives to make a story that was as entertaining as it was high art. But this collection, despite how amateur it is, really goes to show you how a writer grows as he or she gets older. Her novel Look at Me, which she wrote before The Keep, also does this. Not only has she grown in talent but in subject matter as well. Nowadays, she is no longer obsessed with modeling, which dominates a good portion of these stories and all of Look at Me despite her coming off as a Bret Easton Ellis too scared to go too far. While none of these stories are any good, some do show her obvious path too greatness, but only on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis. A few sentences are good and the setups to some of these stories would be awesome in the hands of an older, wiser Egan. But I cannot really recommend any of these stories, which are forgettable at best, bad at their worst. Her rise in popularity may cause a curious few to read a few of these stories, but I feel they might be disappointed.

Rating: 3/5