This collection was darkly funny but maybe too satirical. I wasn't sure if i was supposed to find the messed up situations funny but I liked it overall.

An enjoyable read with interesting characters & storyline. I will be looking for more from this author! Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC.

An Oral History Of Atlantis by Ed Park with the exception of the last story Password, which I found pointless the other stories I thought were really good some were better than others but in my opinion all are worth reading. my favorite I think is the first one A Note To My Translator, or The Sailor And The Wayfairer, but all are good definitely worth a read. I will absolutely be reading more by this author in the future. #NetGalley, #TheBlindReviewer, #MyHonestReview, #EdPark, #AnOralHistoryOfAtlantis,

Truly a challenging book to review, as these short stories are so unique and otherwordly that it's difficult to say whether it was good or not, just simply that they were attention-grabbing. The wife on Valium is the story that affected me the most, but I definitely enjoyed the strangeness of these stories. I would recommend reading a couple and then breaking once in awhile, as they can blend together a bit into one dreamlike story if you read it quickly.

An enjoyable collection of short stories. The collection itself was very smart and witty, enjoyable to read. How can we grow in the future, by looking at our past? Also, loved how it focused on how we perceive vs the difference in reality. I would love to read this one again.

Great collection of stories. Some woven together in strange ways that work. Possibly these hit me harder as someone close to Ed Park in age, lots of generational references. A few are perplexing and some are sad. But all of the stories work.

Some very strong stories and some a lot weaker. Overall they were fine but some of them dragged down my rating.

Thanks to NetGalley & Random House for the ARC!

Ed Park’s "An Oral History of Atlantis" is a vibrant, lyrical collection of short stories about how we find forward momentum by looking back.

Short story collections are often literary roulette—for every great story, you have to risk several that are preoccupied with their own form, too reliant on narrative gimmicks or the performative impact of brevity.

I note this for two reasons: First, "An Oral History of Atlantis" doesn’t have a single dud, and second, it constantly entertains and interrogates the self-indulgence that plagues the genre.

It’s also just a lot of fun.

I mean, this is a book where driving a car through rain is described as “a deep-tissue massage for the Honda.”

Thematically, these stories are unified by nostalgia as mis-remembrance. Many of the characters are aimless—one might say plotless—except for a desire to return to something. We read about someone who anonymously buys his childhood belongings from his mother on eBay. Another character creates a VR startup where people can live in simulations of the homes they grew up in. In another story, we follow an actress and director as they record a commentary for some b-movie trash they made decades prior.

In each instance, some semblance of a harsher reality—a crueler present moment—slips through the cracks.

To put it another way, these stories circle around the idea of whether interpretation matters more than reality. Is there some sort of fictive truth created by the way we rewrite experience? To invoke the title, what happens when we codify that which didn’t actually happen? Sometimes it’s laughably garish, as in the opening story where a translator radically alters the source material, but elsewhere it’s life or death, such as when a spy’s failure to interpret coded messages secures his downfall.

Park’s playful tone prevents the stories from buckling under their thematic weight, and I found myself giggling at how he presents the absurdity of life’s mundanities, particularly in the context of academia. Similarly, he has a gift for wordplay that smartly flirts with stupidity. For example, we read about university organizations ranging from “the assault-awareness group Take Back the Night to Take Back the Knight, a chess mentoring program.” There’s a consideration of text as visual humor here, and it’s something Park uses to great effect as the collection gradually dips into surrealism.

This is just a great book cover-to-cover, and it’s one that invites readers to reflect on their own reflection. Why are we so intent on looking back?

Wow! This was my first book to read by this author but definitely not my last! This book will leave you wanting for more and the characters and storyline stick with you long after you finish it. Do yourself a favor and pick up this page-turner!

A delightful pastiche of tales and prose, this book of short stories by the 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Ed Park brings us characters who cover the gamut from a novelist frustrated by his creative translator to the long suffering husband of an Ambian addicted wife. There is wit, creativity and a poignancy in these tales that make this a work to be savored and re-read.

3.5 stars, rounding up. Here's the thing: I did not remember any stories in this collection, sitting here a month after I finished it. That's bad! Yet in looking at either the publisher synopsis or some of the other reviews here, and having them jog my memory, all the ones that came back to mind made me go "Oh! That story was really good (or funny, or inventive, or clever, etc.)!" That's good! You, the reader of reviews, will have to decide which part to weigh more heavily.

An Oral History of Atlantis by Ed Park turned out to be a quick but indulging read, hopping from one curious short story to the next. Park writes delightful literary prose that packs subtle humor and everyday societal malheurs.

This anthology includes a variety of genres, but my favorites were two speculative pieces. Most evocative of all was perhaps the dreamy tale of eighteen Tinas living on an exclusively female island.

The underlying dystopia in this story parallels the deep-seated dread that accompanies his other pieces, and many of us will find ourselves in the subtle hopelessness of Park's modern life depiction.

All in all a beautiful read that deviates from the fictional norm. Well done!

In gratitude to Random House for the Advance Reader's Copy. My apologies for the delay with this review.

I don’t read many short story collections, but a recommendation from a Bookstagrammer that I follow, and its availability on NetGalley, put this weird, quirky, thoroughly enjoyable book firmly in my path. Sometimes the world works exactly as it should.

These 16 stories (written over 25 years!) are unique and I found I needed to approach each one individually and giving time and space to absorb its meaning. Many of them are funny, but also disconcerting, and sometimes even cruel. Many of the characters are oddballs, living on the periphery of their own lives, but also compelling in their perceptions and experiences. I found myself alternating between chuckles and gasps, and occasionally even an unintended exclamation of disbelief. What more can you want from stories?

Favorite stories:
The Wife on Ambien
Eat Pray Click
Slide to Unlock
Machine City (Yale!)

Please note: I received a digital copy from NetGalley & Random House in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are strictly my own.

A funny and inspiring collection of short stories, each one testing the boundaries of writing. The collection is brimming with stories inside stories, small packages that give you a lot to think (or write) about.

An Oral History of Atlantis by Ed Park is one of those books that I jumped at the bit for when I saw the galley available! Described as a "deadpan, wildly imaginative collection of stories that slices clean through the mundanity and absurdity of modern life," I expected something funny and meaningful. I'd not read anything by Ed Park before so I was not sure what to expect! I read through this once and found that it did not really resonate with me. However, after reading other reviews I thought surely it was a me issue, not a story issue, and read through this collection a second time. It still left me confused more times than not. I still think it's a me issue! I find that books also change in their meaning to me during different periods of my life depending on what else I am watching and reading at that time, so I look forward to returning to this at a later date.

Filled with oddball humor, this collection of short stories highlighted Park's ability to craft a set of stories that make writing fun. Take a creative prompt and play with it. Develop characters that have to handle conflict in down-to-earth or unexpected ways. Toy with characters who are characters, settings, happenstance, relationships. The stories reminded me a lot of creative writing classes I took as an undergrad, where I wrote to enjoy writing rather than to deliver a mind-blowing message, but I sometimes found I accidentally delivered those anyway.

I, like other reviewers, didn't love all the stories, but some will stick with me. I appreciated "An Accurate Account" because I liked the tone of the narrative voice; I loved "The air as air" for making me think about my eyes as lungs; "Weird Menace" was fun because of its format--I like a script that reveals hidden character depths without the need for narrative explanation; "Eat Pray Click" -- excellently clever commentary on intellectual property. "Well moistened..." for all the Tinas, and "Oral History of Atlantis" for Walter Walter.

Many thanks to Random House and NetGalley for access to the ARC.

I had a difficult time with this book. The prose is fine and not badly written, but overall it was like, not that funny , not that interesting, not enjoyable for me. Some stories were a little more engaging than others.

I don’t understand what any of the fuss regarding Ed Park’s slim book of short stories “An Oral History of Atlantis” is about; I found the stories to be meaningless drivel and Incomprehensibly stupid. They are not in the least bit funny or even amusing. I received it as an advanced reader’s copy from NetGalley and wanted to read it because his novel “ Same Bed Different Dreams” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, one of PublishersWeekly’s Ten Best Books of the Year, a NY Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and a Best Books of the Year from The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Public Library, Polygon, and Kirkus Reviews. Ugh! My review of “An Oral History” is voluntary.

An Oral History of Atlantis is a short story collection that was just recently released. Though I prefer a novel, I am increasingly finding myself enjoying these collections. Ed Park writes about a diverse collection of subjects based on clever observations and playful witty prose. I was thoroughly delighted. There were many laugh out loud moments from the very beginning of the collection with A Note to My Translator. Eat Pray Click was another favorite about the use of AI meddling with our ereaders. The last story, the titular An Oral History of Atlantis, about a Manhattan that is metaphorically disappearing. So grateful to NetGalley and Random House for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for my an honest review.

I love a story collection, but this is the type of story collection that makes me feel dumb because I can’t follow it and I have no idea what I’m reading or what it means. “Weird Menace” was fun; the rest of them were unfortunately above my pay grade and didn’t hold my interest.