Reviewed by Kari Trogen

On the surface, Elyse Friedman's Long Story Short is a collection of sardonic, depressing tales of contemporary life. After a teenage lark gone wrong, the high school protagonist of "A Bright Tragic Thing" ends up more of an outsider than when he started. In "The Soother," a father disconnected from his family finds his only happy moments in sexual role-playing in diapers, while "Wonderful" takes us on a Frank-Capra-from-hell journey into the past of a bankrupted man. Confidently written and seamlessly moving between voices, these stories have the readability of Nick Hornby, updated for the 2000s with allusions to Ebay, Youtube, IMDB, and "Skating With Celebrities." But the pointlessness of the characters' lives, realistic but dissatisfying, can make for a gloomy read.

Where Friedman avoids merely depressing us, however, is in pointing out the comic outrageousness of human existence. Despair is softened with humour so that each story is not entirely bleak. There is something wickedly fun in the idea of a Christmas angel pointing out how the world would be better without you in it, and offering to aid in your suicide attempt. Even while feeling down about the plight her characters, we cannot help but laugh at the hilarity of Friedman's situations, and admit that we, too, have our moments of cynicism. Seeing something of ourselves in this motley crew of losers and outsiders, we root for them.

Yet Friedman's biggest strength, even more than the comedy of her storytelling, is in her small moments of human connection. "A Bright Tragic Thing"'s protagonist, previously trapped in the thoughtlessness of youth, is ultimately able to pity an aging has-been actor. In "Truth," lovers of convenience admit their fears of lonely nights, and their need to share a mattress with another warm body. The collection grows more engrossing with the heartbreakingly innocent protagonist of "Lost Kitten," a sheltered woman whose childlike delight in sharing a glass of Bailey's with her neighbour makes her "happier than she'd felt in years." Even if you can't relate to or laugh at the horny one-track mind of the teenage male, or the selfish sexual appetites of lonely men and women, these kernels of sympathy are redeeming.

The stand-out story for me was "The Virtual Tour," in which Friedman's capacity for pathos shines through the most. Ending the collection with this, with Friedman at her most tender, highlights Long Story Short's empathetic sensitivity.

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Reviewed by Brenna Clarke Gray

Elyse Friedman’s short story collection, Long Story Short, is the best kind of contemporary gathering of moments, because it reads like the thoughts you never knew other people had.  It is your deepest, innermost controversial and naughty thoughts – only wittier, smarter, racier, and funnier.  From the utterly truthful reconstruction of the life of a high school outsider in “A Bright Tragic Thing” to the bizarre set-up of “The Lost Kitten,” each story blends blush-inducing outrageousness with real and tender humour, both of which mask the true theme of Long Story Short, which is the crushing loneliness of modern life.  From a man who finds his only peace in one-hour appointments spent role-playing as a baby to the woman who escapes the serenity of her marriage only to find that she was happier in so-called confinement, the characters in this collection are bonded together by the sense of profound and irreconcilable sadness that they mask with ironic humour and cynical observations.  The story “Truth,” which laughs at the lies we tell one another on a first date, really points out the extent to which we cannot be honest with one another outside of the realm of fiction, and highlights the need we all have for interpersonal connections and the difficulty of achieving those connections.

The biggest strength of Long Story Short is Friedman’s capacity for voice.  Each story is told from a very distinct perspective and the eyes of a very clear character, and all the characters speak from their own voices.  This makes the stories believable and realistic, and allows for the reader to be completely engrossed in the world of the story.  From the first moments of the collection you are constantly swept into the world Friedman shapes, which makes the funny experiences more engaging and the loneliness of the individual characters more heartbreaking.  This is a collection of intense feeling, and Friedman’s rare gift is the ability to take the reader from a fit of uproarious laughter at the machinations of drunken teenage life to sobs of tears at the woman who phones to claim a stray kitten she never lost.  Long Story Short is painful beauty and delicate sadness, and Elyse Friedman is the glorious love-child of Lisa Moore and Dave Eggers.  She is not to be missed, and this collection should be cherished always and recommended unequivocally.

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Reviewed by Vicky Simpson

Elyse Friedman's Long Story Short is like American Beauty in book form and set in Canada. The novella and five short stories negotiate the relatively uncharted terrain of our own Canadian disturbia, and they are populated by vivid, realistic contemporary characters. Most of these characters face poignant personal crises as they yearn to be anyone other than who they really are, and all of them will remain with the reader as insightful portraits of our age long after the collection is put down.

Dave Burke, for example, the lead character in the novella “A Bright Tragic Thing,” is the typically aimless, sardonic Canadian teenager. Dave, like his friend Todd, feels trapped somewhere between the conventional middle-class family from which he comes, and the alternative and distinctive person he really wants to be. Dave has breezed through high school relying on his humour and charm more than his brains, and tops off the year with a prom tuxedo “the colour of orange sherbet” and “white patent leather shoes” (51). The boys' biggest accomplishment, however, is the hilarious ploy of contacting washed-up stars from the cheesiest sitcoms of the 1980s, pretending to be exuberant fans fishing for signed mementos. This brings them into contact with Murray Mortenson, who once had a role as “Billy AWOL Jones” on the show Mother Knows Better. However, this meeting gives new purpose to all the people involved – Dave and Todd begin to record Dave's frequent phone conversations with Murray with a view to selling the tapes of the D-list celebrity's alcoholic rants to Entertainment Tonight or TMZ, while Murray, invigorated by his encounter with an appreciative fan, decides to drive the short distance to Dave's home in Toronto to search for a new agent and spend time with his new buddy. Oscillating between comic and tragic, the encounter eventually leads Murray and Dave to evaluate how each of them has, in many respects, checked out of his own life.

Friedman's collection is well-written, darkly humorous, and, above all else, thoughtful. Each story is more fascinating than the one previous, revealing extraordinary secrets hidden beneath the shells of ordinary people: a wealthy, respectable man with a secret fetish for being coddled and nursed like a baby; a couple who meet for a first date and speak every thought that crosses their minds; a financially ruined and suicidal man who is prompted by an angel to honestly consider what difference, if any, his life has made. The slim collection without one superfluous line has been called “part Kafka, part South Park,” an apt description that alludes to the wide audience that will appreciate the stories, from world-weary teenagers who rarely pick up any reading material apart from Maxim magazine to literary aficionados who shrewdly survey each new arrival on the Canadian book market. Friedman offers something for everyone, which is all the more remarkable considering her fresh perspective and unusual style.

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Reviewed by Rachel Sa

Elyse Friedman is a master of weaving the bizarre and the heartfelt. Her latest effort, Long Story Short, a novella and short stories, is a delightfully off-kilter look at the everyday world. As with her previous two outings, Then Again and Waking Beauty, Long Story Short takes us into a world that exists just around the corner from our own.

Reading the novella, “A Bright Tragic Thing,” and the accompanying five stories feels like seeing yourself reflected in the wonderfully warped surface of a fun-house mirror. Your first instinct may be to laugh – because a twisted humour is wired into this sharp collection. But Friedman's tales go far beyond being merely off-the-wall. In her funhouse, you can only look into that warped mirror image for so long before the humanity comes into focus, despite the distortions. As it does, the image becomes more poignant and truthful than a straight-on reflection could ever be.

Beginning with “A Bright Tragic Thing,” Friedman authentically and hilariously captures the smart-ass wit and twisted humour of best friends Dave and Todd. They are self-appointed social outcasts on the cusp of high school graduation who delight in trolling for autographs and memorabilia from little-known, and often pathetically washed-up, sitcom stars. An unforgettable inscription on an 8x10 of Golden Girl Betty White scores the best “That's-so-twisted-it's-hysterical” laugh of the novella.

But Dave's plan to score the ultimate piece of sad-star memorabilia backfires when one has-been actor, the fictional Murray Mortensen, responds in an unexpected way.

The only misstep in the tale is the too-muted reaction from Dave's mother in the wake of a shocking turn of events.

In the stories, Friedman's funhouse mirror is especially honest in the aptly titled, “Truth.” In this story, the unspoken is spoken as Friedman strips away the veneer of everyday social interactions to showcase the insecurities - and humanity - of two would-be suitors.

“The Soother” takes a closer look, from a different angle, at the daily life of seemingly successful tobacco company executive Lucas, who pays a prostitute to nurse and swaddle him like a baby. In the story “Wonderful,” there is a flip-flop on a cherished holiday convention that will make you look askew at everything you once thought of as commonplace.

Askew in Friedman's world is not a misrepresentation. Rather, she creates a fresh perspective for the reader and a chance to re-imagine the seemingly ordinary.

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Reviewed by T. Keith Edmunds

Elyse Friedman has a true knack for knocking the real world askew. In her novella and short stories, Long Story Short she shows a keen eye for identifying a true-to-life situation and adding only enough unreality to make the result compellingly bizarre while maintaining the illusion that such situations could occur on this side of the page.

The novella, “A Bright Tragic Thing”, is a coming of age story unlike any I have read before. While most stories of this type focus on a tragic incident as the catalyst, Friedman also manages to tie in the awkwardness of teenage sexuality, the stressors of early adulthood, and the sadness of a life squandered on past glories. Dark, funny and sad, the author manages to cover all the bases.

The short stories range across the spectrum of human experience, but all manage to pierce directly to the heart of these experiences. For example, “Truth” explicitly spells out the subtext in a male-female encounter by imaging that characters speak nothing but the unadulterated truth. Its stunning accuracy is the root of its comedic result. Similarly, “The Soother” identifies the multitude of pressures placed upon individuals in today's world and the complete lack of a means of escape.

In almost every one of the tales in her book, Friedman's talent bring a story to a conclusion with an open, yet satisfying, end is made very clear. Such endings can easily go horribly wrong, but the author repeatedly shows that these are her preferred sorts of endings – much, I suppose, like life.

Were I was to be asked if I could recommend this book, I would have to stated, unreservedly, “Yes.”

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Reviewed by Heidi Butler

Elyse Friedman's newest work of fiction, “Long Story Short,” wittily highlights the humour in everyday tragedies. From a prom interrupted by a has-been child star to a brutally honest first date, Friedman's characters navigate twistedly familiar situations. The book's opening novella, “A Bright Tragic Thing,” centres on Dave, a teenager whose main ambition (aside from pursuing Helen Korakianitis) involves collecting artefacts and autographs from obscure 80's television stars. When he contacts Murray Mortenson, the former pizza delivery boy on Mother Knows Better, Dave chooses the wrong out-of-work actor to butter up. Mortenson responds with far more than a signed photo, and becomes obsessed with the fan who (falsely) praises his “rare comic genius.” The novelty of having a pseudo-celebrity stalker fades as Mortenson intrudes further into Dave's school, social, and love lives. Friedman's comedy becomes increasingly dark as Mortenson's delusions of future fame unravels and his celebrity persona falls away, and she simultaneously evokes compassion and annoyance toward the increasingly out-of-control character.

The empathy Friedman evokes at the novella's conclusion is repeated throughout the following short stories, each of which explores life's seemingly minor, yet ever-multiplying difficulties. “Wonderful,” her re-imagining of It's a Wonderful Life, may first appear clichéd, but the story quickly becomes hilarious in its blank suggestion that the world might be a better place if its main character had never been born. As in “Wonderful,” the constant pressure of day-to-day existence torture characters in the book's short fiction. In “The Soother,” Lucas responds to these pressures by placating his single, pregnant daughter, by protecting his (supposedly) ailing wife, and by scheduling a weekly appointment with a woman who pretends he is an infant. The characters in “Truth,” who abandon the pretension and posturing that goes along with dating, escape their fears by clinging to each other, regardless that they find one another mutually repulsive.

Friedman's characters often think the worst of and plan the worst for each other, but the stories and novella pose two options for resolving these relationships: some characters, like Lucas, retreat within themselves, while others, such as Dave and the woman protagonist of “The Kitten,” consciously try to relieve their anxieties by reaching out to other people. Neither approach can rescue characters from their circumstances, and both approaches cement absurdity into characters' daily lives. This resistance to easy resolution emphasizes life's unpredictability, and completes Friedman's indication that life's strange comedy should be appreciated while its little compassions are celebrated.

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Reviewed by Bradley Lawrence

You will not get a moment's rest from wit in these pages, not even in the title itself. Long Story Short is a collection of Elyse Friedman's writing, consisting of the novella “A Bright Tragic Thing” and several short stories. The book is consistently well-written and easy to read. The plots are easy to follow and the humour is sometimes subtle but still hard to miss.

The novella is the centrepiece, making up slightly more than half of the book. It follows Dave, a teenager struggling to finish up his high school career, as he gets himself caught up in an unexpected chain of events. It is really a story about love and loss, Dave's own as well as the washed-up actor who plays his older counterpart in the story.

A story about love and loss may sound clichéd, but in this case it's anything but. Elyse Friedman lays out the story carefully, balancing the serious issues with wit and humour, and she creates intensely believable characters. I do not use the term ‘intensely believable' lightly, as I feel the believability of the characters is one of the strongest aspects of the book. By the end I felt like I might have known the characters myself, and this lent an air of credibility to an otherwise unlikely series of events. I began to wonder if the events, as improbable as they are, could've happened at my school.

While the ending can certainly be appreciated for its ironic value, it left me feeling vaguely disappointed that there was no more to the story. It seems like a shame that the characters have been developed so well only to have to move on and leave them behind without knowing how everything eventually turned out for them.

The short stories are quite a bit more whimsical than “A Bright Tragic Thing”, but they come across with the same mix of seriousness and humour that was characteristic of the novella. The stories touch on topics as varied as smoking, lies, debt, and, of course, sex. “Truth” offers a compelling view of romance (or perhaps lack thereof) through the lens of total honesty. What would happen if we were all completely honest with one another? Not a new concept, perhaps, but well-told nonetheless. “Wonderful” explores what would change in the world if a man (who thought himself to be quite important) had never been born at all. The stories all manage to be simultaneously slightly depressing and tremendously amusing.

The short stories are certainly a nice addition, especially for those not already familiar with Elyse Friedman's considerable talent, but the novella remains the most important story in the book. Even if the novella were to stand alone, it would be enough to recommend Long Story Short without hesitation; the short stories are simply the icing on the cake.

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Reviewed by Jennifer Charlton

Meet Todd and Dave, two middle-class Toronto teenagers who while away their high school days collecting 80s sitcom paraphernalia.

Meet Lucas, a man so consumed by his family's well being that he neglects his own and is only able to find solace in a woman named Irma.

Meet Leslie and Martin, two people who give the term ‘honesty' a new meaning.

These are just some of the characters found in Elyse Friedman's riveting collection.

Long Story Short is a showcase of human emotion and vulnerability at its most raw. What makes these stories so appealing is the truth about human desire that Friedman disguises in dark, dry humour. From the opening sentence of the novella, A Bright Tragic Thing to the closing paragraph of the story, The Virtual Tour, Friedman intrigues her reader with the blatant and sometimes shocking flaws each character wears on his or her sleeve like a trophy.

Friedman's prose is edgy without being offensive; smart, without being pretentious; and funny, without losing its literary credibility. Her voice echoes that of both Douglas Coupland and Chuck Palahniuk in that each plot borders on the line of absurdity yet contains a sort of subtle truth that the majority of her readers will relate to.

Long Story Short is a refreshing and witty collection from a very talented Canadian writer. For the majority of my reading experience, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry with the characters and their, at-times, pathetic existences. Friedman's talent lies in her power to create a world that, on the surface, seems superficial, but ends up hitting her reader across the head with its striking and disturbing reality.

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Reviewed by Andrea Douglas

Long Story Short is a collection of stories plus a novella in which Friedman explores themes of loneliness, loss, and disconnection by allowing the reader into the minds of multiple characters, exposing their motivations and offering astute insights into both female and male psyches — even when she writes from one character's point of view only. Thus, Friedman generates conflict by placing characters whose intentions are at cross-purposes together in everyday situations gone awry, revealing the divisions between people and letting the reader connect with one character while empathizing with them all.

The novella “A Bright Tragic Thing” is a modern coming-of-age story. Friedman critiques the blasé attitudes of young “alternative” hipsters who embrace the ironic by collecting cheesy '80s memorabilia, watching derivative '80s movies and sitcoms on cable rerun channels, and laughing at washed-up celebrities on reality shows and YouTube. Of course, those of us who grew up in the '80s realize that popular culture at that time was influenced by the North American economic boom; therefore, the media portrayed a bright, hopeful age full of happy, successful Cosby families, optimistic John Hughes teen films, and stories of the little guy fighting against overwhelming odds to come out on top — and we unironically embraced it all. But these days, it seems that ridiculing sincerity and liking something because it's “bad” is safe; liking something for real opens one up to judgment and, perhaps, ridicule. And that's where Dave, a teenager who needs to let go of irony to experience adult life in earnest, and Murray, an alcoholic unemployed '80s sitcom actor who can't let go of his past, come in.

Friedman's short fiction is at its best when she plays with the reader's expectations, drawing us into a scenario for a few pages before turning the narrative on its head. “Soother” seems to start out with a peaceful, tender scene between mother and infant until the script is flipped and the reader abruptly realizes that the characters, and the relationship between them, are much different than they first appear. “Truth” is a simultaneously poignant and laugh-out-loud funny account of a first date where the participants do away with phony social niceties to voice exactly what each one is thinking about the other. And “Lost Kitten” acts as a counterpoint to “Truth”: The characters hide their intentions, making their perceptions of each other limited and unreliable, but the reader is gradually able to read between the lines to anticipate a chilling conclusion to their encounter.

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Reviewed by Ben Löf

Stunning Bleakness. Occasional Beauty.

This is a first story collection impressively uniform in its voice and vision. Throughout 213 pages, we are lured in by a voice that is perfectly distanced, confident and in full control, able to openly tease at will, for example with repetition: “All was well. All was well.”

As for the vision throughout the novella and ensuing quintet of stories, Elyse Friedman demonstrates a masterful portrayal of the pitfalls of modern, urban existence, with the occasional, necessary note (sometimes more of a whisper) of redemption that keeps shape to the narratives.

Friedman employs devastating humour: poignant funny, at its near-blackest. Consider the relentless double-edged hilarity of the novella, “A Bright Tragic Thing,” and its protagonist Dave, the high school student and pop-culture aficionado, staring at Mortenson, the monster-of-his-own-making (a burnt-out 80s television celebrity that has infiltrated Dave's life, city, and now his parents' house): “Mortenson in a greenish-gray suit, eating Cheerios and drinking coffee with Dave's family… while the thing may have fit Mortenson in some previous decade, his flesh was now straining against it— seams pulling, threads tested. And he was wearing too much cologne. Dave could smell it before… A wall of reek. A cloud of desparate.”

The novella is in fact the most memorable, absurd thing here. True to life, it so accurately conjures the horrible, spiralling feeling of having a day, and sometimes your life itself, railroaded by someone who keeps sucking you back in. The true feat, though, is that Dave believably connects with the grotesque Murray Mortensen and comes to realize it is best friend Todd that has led him astray.

It is a fantastic Torontonian mini-Bildungsroman, conjuring David Bezmozgis' Natasha of a few years back. Yet one wonders two things: Does the limited arc of Dave's ‘becoming' really merit the wealth of plot (and pages) it is given or could it be handled more economically? And why place the novella at the start of the book instead of the end—wouldn't the pop of the stories be a better way to get things running?

As for the short stories, “The Soother” is a high point, wowing with its opening reversal where things aren't as they seem after a page. With pummelling force, “Wonderful” satirizes humanity's inconsequentiality in a parody of It's a Wonderful Life, only this George's angel-guided tour reveals that everyone is better off without him. While still engaging, it turns out to be the only relatively mediocre piece in the set, fizzling out in its slightly ambiguous ending.

The story that rises above the others, however, is “Truth,” which was nominated for, and ought to have won, the Journey Prize a few years ago. The dialogue, already keenly wrought in the collection, is lifted another rung in this tale of a man and woman who speak only absolute truth on a blind date. As the night out seems to be winding down, Leslie makes no bones about leaving: “Well, I guess I'll go home, put on Blond On Blonde, turn out all the lights, and get shit-faced.” Although the final line of the story is unnecessary, it's notable that just when the narrative stretches out and starts to feel like a mere vindication of cynicism, an underbelly of vulnerability and deeper honesty emerges.

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