I'm a third through How to Breathe Underwater and I can already tell: Julie Orringer writes stories the way I want to write stories, but she actually writes the stories that way and I still write the stories I write like I've got aliens inside my fingers that always make me type the wrong words at the wrong time. Already several times I've read a sentence of hers, and it doesn't even have to be a special sentence, it could just be four or so words, maybe more maybe less, but there's something about that sentence appearing where it does, when it does, and it will be constructed so perfectly and effortlessly, like someone once just said it and it appeared on the page and the story bloomed outward around it in all the graceful directions, and I read those sentences and I think, "That's a sentence I want to have written; that's a sentence I'd never have written," and I'm simultaneously depressed and inspired by it, and it's all confusing and fun.
Which is a long-winded way of saying I'm enjoying the book and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.
I mean, unless the little aliens got to her fingers, too, for the last six stories of the book. I'm guessing she's immune, though.
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