Review- Up All Night: A Short Story Collection by Laura Geringer

Up All Night on Goodreads

 BOOK SUMMARY:

A brush with the supernatural? A rock concert? A reunion? A poolside revelation? The need to know what's up? The confessions of a friend? The dream of escape? A sick pet? An English assignment? The rear-window view of a murder next door? The search for the mother you never met? What keeps you up all night?

This remarkable collection of award-winning and bestselling authors is thought provoking, insightful, heartfelt, and powerful. 

Release date: April 18th 2008

Published by: Laura Geringer Book

Page numbers: 220

REVIEW: 

Up All Night is a collection of six very unique and very interesting short stories, written by six very brilliant authors. In the collection, there are: Phase 2 by Peter Abrahams, Not Just for Breakfast Anymore by Libba Bray, The Vulnerable Hours by David Levithan (the reason why I decided to read the book in the first place), Orange Alert by Patricia McCormick, Superman is Dead by Sarah Weeks and The Motherless One by Gene Luen Yang (which is more of an illustration with dialogues, really). Aside from David Levithan, all the authors were new to me and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I relished both their story-telling and writing.

The book begins with a lovely introduction by publisher Laura Geringer, who has, very meticulously and poignantly, summarised every story in barely a line and it manages to both give a slight glimpse into the story and pique the reader's interest. I never really bother writing about introductions and all, but this one really stuck with me because it was done so well that I couldn't not say something about it. Besides, Geringer has published a really, really nice book with stories that are creative, touching and thought-provoking.

Coming to the stories, like I mentioned before they were all very well written and told. Some of my favourites are basically all of them, expect Not Just for Breakfast Anymore and The Motherless One, because while the former was very long as compared to the rest and slightly incomprehensible as well, the latter was fun to read, but a narrative would've been much better. Keeping that aside, however, the collection was varied and covered up a bunch of stuff.

Phase 2, The Vulnerable Hours (no surprise there!), Orange Alert and Superman is Dead were stories that I fell in love with because of how unique and splendid they were. These stories took up very daily and mundane events and turned them into something so extraordinary and special that it was difficult not to admire and appreciate them. I would love to summarise every story, but with short stories, there's always the fear of letting everything out and I'm no Laura Gringer to give perfect and on-point summaries.

Overall, I would highly, highly recommend this collection because it's easy to read and yet managedsto leave a heavy impact on the readers because of the way in which every story is portrayed.

Buy the book: AMAZON