Lovely collection of short stories about love, loss and grief. I liked that all the stories are different, yet all centered around death.

I've heard such good things about Danticat but perhaps this book of short stories just wasn't a good starting point for me: I found the writing plain which isn't always a problem but the stories are very 'told' so that I felt often that I was kept at arm's distance from the real feeling of the tales. The stories give a window on Haitian culture and the themes are emotionally-loaded: love, death, memories, loss, home... but somehow they didn't engage me in the way I wanted them to. I think this was down to the huge emphasis on each narrator who 'tells' the story rather than having it dramatised. I also felt that a bit too much was pinned down and worked out, another function of that narratorial telling so there was little work for me as a reader to do. This is clearly a subjective response: I just wasn't a good match with this book.

I loved this book. All life is here. The characters leapt off the page into my mind and have stayed there. Powerful writing, emotional writing. Eight stories, each with their own slice of life. An evocative painting of Haiti and Miami, drawn together, torn apart. I can't praise this book too highly.

This is a gem of a book. Eight short stories, all beautifully written and linked by themes of what it is to be, I want to say a migrant but that's not enough. It's about people who travel from or to their country of origin and what that means to their identity and to their relationship with themselves and others. The focus is on Haiti but the stories encompass other people passing through and between other countries too. The stories create a sense, for me, that these people are connected by their shared experience into a group that the word migrant does a disservice to. The complexities of their situations, their loves, their losses, their having to centre their lives into themselves as everything else shifts and changes gives them depth and experience that the author draws out as a richness that is almost ennobling. I loved this.

I had high hopes for this one as it is a Reese Book Club picks and I usually enjoy the books she recommends. Please don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing "wrong" with this book, it just didn't blow me away - the reason for this is likely that I'm not someone who generally enjoys short stories as I prefer to walk a journey with a character instead of abruptly leaving them behind...I thought many of the stories would make great novels!

Each of the stories are beautifully written, but it took me some time to get through this book as finishing one story didn't have me dying to read the next. While reading about the Haiti was very interesting and the themes gave me something to think about, I struggled to connect with the characters - none of them really moving me or stealing my heart.

The first story, and the second to last story, were absolutely engrossing and incredible. So vividly written with engrossing stories that i could happily have a whole novel on! The remaining stories has some poignant moments too, though didnt pack as much a punch as the other two. This is my first read of Danticat, and to start with short stories is a wonderful introduction and i cant wait to read more!

This was such a wonderful and poignant collection of short stories.
In a interview on LitHub Edwige Danticat said that one of the reasons why she loves the short story form is that it allows her “to magnify smaller moments and to linger on these small epiphanies in the smaller interactions that mean so much”, and indeed each one of her stories seems to prolong a particular moment in her characters' lives.
Given the brevity of her stories Danticat doesn't wast any words. And yet, while her writing could be described as both economic and simple, her prose also demonstrated a richness of expression that resonated with the feelings and scenarios experienced by her characters.

Through the wide range of her narratives Danticat examines similar themes in very different ways. Within her stories Danticat navigates the way in which bonds are tested, broken, or strengthened in times of crisis. Most of Danticat's narratives are concerned in particular with the diasporic experiences of Haitians in America, and she emphasises the feelings of longing, loneliness, and disconnect faced by those who are seen as 'other' in a poignant yet matter of fact way. They are never reduced to the status of 'outsider', nor are they completely united by their heritage, as each one of them has a distinctive voice and a particular relationships with the countries they inhabit.
With seeming ease Danticat imbues her characters with their own history and personality, so that within a few pages we would feel as if we'd know them personally, so much so that to define them as characters seems almost an injustice.
Within these narratives the ordinary moments that make up everyday life can carry both enlightening and tragic overtones. These stories centre on the characters' anxieties, hopes, and fears they may harbour for themselves or their loved ones.
In “Dosas” Elsie, a nurse’s assistant, is betrayed by her husband and her own best friend. Months later her now ex-husband calls her and begs her to help pay the ransom for his kidnapped girlfriend, who happens to be Elsie's former friend. His increasingly desperate calls threaten to disrupt the course of her life.
In “The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special” a woman who has returned to Haiti to run a hotel with her husband is confronted with her own privilege when her young nanny is diagnosed with AIDS; the woman has to reconcile herself with her own misjudgement regarding her nanny's mother and with her preference for a white doctor over a local one.
In “Hot-Air Balloons” we observe the bond between two young women, one of which has started to work for Leve a women's organisation in which she witnesses the most brutal aspects of humanity. Still, even when we are presented with these stark accounts of abuse or suffering the story maintains a sense of hope in the genuine relationship between these two women.
Another story that examines the bond between two women is “Seven Stories”. After publishing a short story a writer is contacted by her childhood friend Callie, the daughter of the prime minister of an unnamed island. After her father's assassination Callie was forced to flee from the island and years later our narrator is invited by her friend who has by now married the island’s new prime minister.

The characters in Danticat's stories are often confronted with impossible choices. Within their realities they are forced to contend against betrayal, illnesses, the devastating earthquake of 2010, medical malpractice, kidnappings, and the risks that come with being 'undocumented'. They are made vulnerable by their status or haunted by the knowledge that the world can be a terrible place. Still, while there were many moments of unease, the stories always maintain a vibrancy that made them hard to put down. Her characters demonstrated empathy, love, and compassion so that her stories never felt bleak or hopeless.

I can't recommend this collection enough. These stories were both upsetting and moving, and within each narrative we follow how a certain 'change' forces each character to reassess their own existence. The crisis they experience are depicted with subtlety and consideration. Danticat interrogates serious themes (identity, mortality, grief) whilst focusing on ordinary moments. Phone conversations and dinners become the backdrop for larger debates. Her narratives illuminate the complexities faced by those who are born, or raised, in a country that is now in crisis.
A heart-rendering collection of stories that provided me with a lot food for thought and which I will be definitely reading again.