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Robert Shearman : Everyone's Just So So Special before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised Everyone's Just So So Special:

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Dark, difficult, brilliantBy Nicholas CaludaFor those new to Robert Shearman, this may not be the place to start. But letrsquo;s pretend yoursquo;re ignoring my advice.Shearman is a hard writer to pin down. He flits in and out of genres with ease, his prose is deceptively simple but clearly thoughtful, and his stories are always more than they let on. As much as there is on the surface here, therersquo;s a lot more hiding below. ldquo;Magical realismrdquo; would be the order of the day when describing Shearmanrsquo;s writing, but that doesnrsquo;t really do his unique (dare I say ldquo;specialrdquo;?) style justice.I recently wrote a short story for a creative writing class in the style of Robert Shearman, aping not just his prose techniques but also a narrative trick that he used in one of the stories in Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical. And I think this is fairly ok ndash; the story itself was original; and Shearman admits in Caustic Comedies to doing a similar thing with one of his heroes, so Irsquo;d like to think he wouldnrsquo;t mind too much. (You donrsquo;t mind, do you, Rob?) I bring up this not-terribly- original story because of my friendrsquo;s brief review of it ndash; ldquo;I didnrsquo;t expect to feel things.rdquo; And thatrsquo;s the way most of Shearmanrsquo;s stories work: you go in unaware (or, at the very least, unprepared) and come out blindsided, hit by a proverbial 18-wheeler ferrying all sorts of feelings around the country.And so it was with the stories in this collection, titled Everyonersquo;s Just So So Special. The book purports to be about history and mediocrity, much like Shearmanrsquo;s previous two books were about death and love. So, you know, easy stuff to tackle. And Shearman takes on these subjects with aplomb, fitting in conflicting views of each so that therersquo;s no easy answer to the questions that each poses.Robert Shearman, on his Tumblr, described Everyonersquo;s Just So So Special as ldquo;a longer and tougher bookrdquo; than his previous two, and this is absolutely the case. The warm fuzzies that hung over most of Tiny Deaths and Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical seem to have taken up residence somewhere else for most of this collectionrsquo;s duration. Perhaps itrsquo;s because history is actually a far darker subject than love or death. The latter two are fundamental human experiences, but history is something wersquo;re far removed from ndash; something cold, abstract, and largely unpleasant. Many of the stories in this collection are microcosms for this idea: someone desperately attempts to be ldquo;specialrdquo; (whatever that means), and they wind up paying the price for it, caught up in historyrsquo;s sweep. Either that, or history does something terrible to someone regardless. ldquo;Restorationrdquo; is about history invading even the world where God certiainly exists and His attempt to shape its narrative into something that makes sense but is almost wholly fabricated.Which is not to say that all the stories contained within are lacking in the humanity that makes Shearmanrsquo;s writing sparkle. Theyrsquo;re certainly more cynical on the whole, and theyrsquo;re often given endings more ambiguous than the already-open ones that typified the stories from Tiny Deaths or Love Songs. ldquo;Taboo,rdquo; in particular, is one that I still canrsquo;t quite come to terms with, even after reading it several times both here and in They Do the Same Things Different There. But if yoursquo;re worried these much darker stories about history would be as abstract as the concept itself, then fear not ndash; Shearmanrsquo;s penchant for clever tricks and human drama is still intact. For example, Shearman gets in a nice pun in the aforementioned ldquo;Restorationrdquo; that completely sailed over my head the first time I read it ndash; history is ldquo;fabricatedrdquo; not just because it is made up but because it is painted on fabric canvases. Itrsquo;s the little things like this that keep the book from being too dark and make the stories in it worth coming back to. You may have also noticed that I didnrsquo;t cite many examples when describing the narrative shape of the book above, and thatrsquo;s because the stories are actually about people. Lots of the time, these people fail miserably, and itrsquo;s often depressing. But there are notable exceptions.Letrsquo;s look, for example, at ldquo;Acronyms,rdquo; not just because itrsquo;s my personal favorite, but because I think itrsquo;s actually the main point of the collection distilled to its essence. The story is actually multiple stories, each interconnected, each about a different character and what they do with their daily lives. The first concerns a railway- station cafeacute; owner who makes the worldrsquo;s greatest BLT sandwich, and who comforts a young woman after her boyfriend leaves her without much explanation. Then, we jump to a story about said boyfriendrsquo;s elderly father, who worked as a spy for some unknown entity years prior. As we move through each characterrsquo;s life, we get a sense that they ARE special in their own way, even if their specialness never gets revealed to any characters in the other stories, or they die pointless deaths, or theyrsquo;re terrible children to their mothers and terrible boyfriends to their loved ones. Even the man renowned for his mediocrity is special, and he has a power that others canrsquo;t even dream of. Who knew, right? Each is Hamlet in his or her own story, AND Rosencrantz or Guildenstern to anotherrsquo;s. But they donrsquo;t make a show of it ndash; theyrsquo;re content to live their special lives in absolute mediocrity.Even the Pope takes a break from his duties to sell ice cream outside of the Vatican, worried that hersquo;ll be judged in Heaven not as a great man but as a middling pope. Or maybe he isnrsquo;t the Pope after all, just a man who looks like him. What difference does it make, when the things he says are so wise, so poignant, so comforting? The church may claim to save your mortal soul, but ice cream can save your mortal stomach.Also running through the book are one and two-page sections full of historical facts, with a story interspersed between them in italics. These sections are where Shearman gets in his trademark postmodern trick, the same one that I stole from Love Songs, where the lines between stories begin to blur and names begin popping up where they shouldnrsquo;t. Theyrsquo;re also printed in size 3 frac12; print (or so it feels like), so they can be a bit of a strain on the eyes sometimes. But please donrsquo;t skip these sections just because theyrsquo;re more difficult to read ndash; they are absolutely worth the extra effort, historical facts and all.In the end, though the book tries to pretend otherwise, this collectionrsquo;s not really about history as such. Itrsquo;s about memory (the incredibly poignant ldquo;A History of Broken Thingsrdquo;), aging (the heartbreaking ldquo;Times Tablesrdquo;), what it means to be a person in a world full of other people just like you. Itrsquo;s about the ldquo;sixty million people in Britain,rdquo; mentioned in ldquo;That Far, and No Further,rdquo; who are ldquo;all lost.rdquo;ldquo;All of us, wersquo;re all lost. Every single one of us.rdquo;Therersquo;s a line from ldquo;The Space,rdquo; a Marillion song, that reveals a fundamental human truth: ldquo;everyone is only everyone else.rdquo; This, I think, is the ultimate message of the book. In the end wersquo;re all struggling not to be great historical figures but just to be half-decent human beings. Which is hard to do sometimes, as Shearman makes clear, but is what comes naturally to us. So what, then, is the purpose of writing the book in the first place? Why try to make art, to be special, if the world will punish you for it? Why write a short story in the style of one of your favorite authors if you know you canrsquo;t ever show it to anyone whorsquo;s read the genuine article, which is so much better than your paltry tale could ever hope to be?Because itrsquo;s in moments that we are special, not in history.This history stuff, itrsquo;s all bunk in the grand scheme of things. Because the grand scheme of things isnrsquo;t actually what we think of at all. Itrsquo;s the ldquo;billions upon billions of footnotes, not worthy of being featured in the main text.rdquo; Itrsquo;s the lovers who drown in the sinking of the Titanic, not the event itself. Itrsquo;s you, and me, and Robert Shearman, and this incredible, terrible, dark, lovely, wonderful book.The title, at first a bitter, cynical, caustic paradox, becomes by the bookrsquo;s end both a beautiful truism and a calm plea.Everyonersquo;s Just So, So Special.So stop trying so hard, dammit.

A little boy who betrays his father to the mercies of Santa Claus. An assassin whose personality is so insipid he erases people with his very presence. This is the history of mankind as told through 21 tales of the comic and the macabre. This is the paperback edition.

About the AuthorTiny Deaths, Rob's first collection of short stories, was published by Comma Press in 2007. It won the World Award for best collection, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and nominated for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize. One of the stories from it was selected by the National Library Board of Singapore as part of the annual Read! Singapore campaign. Rob was one of the writers for the BAFTA award winning first series of the revived series starring Christopher Eccleston. His episode, , was runner- up for a Hugo Award, and his award-winning contributions to the audio range of Doctor Who released by Big Finish have been broadcast on BBC Radio. In 2008 his short story project for BBC7, The Chain Gang, won him a Sony Award, and he provided a second series in 2009. Other stories have been broadcast by the BBC on Radio 3 and Radio 4. His many plays for Radio 4, produced by , include Inappropriate Behaviour, Afternoons with Roger, Forever Mine, Towards the End of the Morning, Teacher's Pet and Odd. His last short story collection, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, won the , the Edge Hill Reader's Prize, and the .

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