... another arresting collection of stories fronted by embattled male protagonists. If it doesn't see him branching out and exploring new territory, it at least consolidates his reputation as a skilled writer with a talent for creating flawed and beleaguered characters and plumbing their emotional depths ... No stories have cut-and-dried conclusions. Some have legs and could have kept on running. Two are markedly strange ... It pays not to ask questions. Instead, just surrender to the raw power and offbeat charm of these expertly wrought tales.
Sayrafiezadeh’s reality quivers seemingly months away from our own. It hinges on the recent White House administrations, which looms eerily in the background of each story’s narrative ... Sayrafiezadeh crafts this world with subtle hands, employing a first-person perspective throughout to give characters a sense of isolation. They seem different and desperate, like they can almost get out but fail to liberate themselves from an ever-narrowing presence of social and governmental systems that permeate their everyday ... The estrangement in America that Sayrafiezadeh describes is one near to our current reality. The isolation his characters try escaping or accept within burgeoning socio-political structures feels just around the corner, a stutter step we’re taking before the next volley of the American experience hits while we dredge on, most of us unaware of the increasing degrees from the center of power. The collection uncovers the illusion of progress in America, like the celebrity we never quite see make it down the mountain but swear we do.
... excellent ... [Sayrafiezadeh] writes with a veteran’s swagger and discipline. Nothing here feels obligatory or tossed off; instead, the collection joins a list that includes Leonard Michaels’s I Would Have Saved Them if I Could, Lorrie Moore’s Like Life and Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Dead Fish Museum as a second book of stories that exceeds and expands upon the promise of the first, confirming the writer as a major, committed practitioner of a difficult form.
It’s not hard to identify the social commentary in that dialogue, but Sayrafiezadeh is too nuanced a writer for this to be his sole objective. He is interested in displacement on both the macro and the micro scale ... The inference is that our stories live inside us first and then we impose them on the world. That’s as true of Danny as of any character in this dark and exhilarating collection, in which even the idea that we might ever come together is one more contrivance, its significance another fabricated illusion.
... stellar ... [Sayrafiezadeh] writes in a scathing first-person voice that astounds you with its immediacy and perceptiveness, about unhappy people who are worn down, exhausted, and drained by an America that has lost its promise. His characters are all haunted by some kind of trauma — sometimes remembered, sometimes not — and he treats their woundedness with a poetic tenderness. He lets us see how alone they are, and how easily they fall between the cracks. He describes with dead-on precision the brutality of their workdays in mind-numbing jobs that pay little. We feel the author’s hovering presence throughout, his understanding of their helplessness — the kind that can paralyze someone into long stints of hiding in godforsaken places, as if they are punishing themselves for crimes they haven’t committed. Despite Sayrafiezadeh’s great success as a writer, teacher, and husband, we sense that there is still a part of him, at 52, that remains lost, and this lostness is reflected back to us in his stories ... Sayrafiezadeh has claimed that writing is difficult for him, and it is apparent, judging by the stories in this collection, that he pulls from the deepest parts of his wounded psyche for inspiration. His prose has a rhythm that is startlingly original and an intense quirkiness that catches you unaware. But I had the sense that this extremely talented author is holding back somewhat, rehashing already mined material. It feels as if he is stuck at a crossroads of sorts and needs a push, like many of his characters, out of his comfort zone and into new territory where his imagination can soar.
We are anchored in the here and now, yet the stories do not read as grasping for relevance, or as dated. Rather, Sayrafiezadeh captures one of the most essential feelings of the modern-day United States, apathy, and holds us to that feeling. The result is an at-times subtle, at-times on the nose, depiction of deterioration and uncertainty in a changing nation ... This slim collection brings us just seven stories, but most are long enough to flesh out entire ideas and realized narratives. Some of these narratives prove simpler than others ... The apathy has its shortcomings as Sayrafiezadeh delves into some of the more shocking subject matter of the collection. For instance, the story Fairground is a retrospective telling of a public hanging. What the story ultimately becomes is the exploration of a family in disarray, a failure to bond with a new step-parent, and a difficult mother-child relationship. While the descriptive writing remains strong throughout, it’s easy to want stronger emotional moments to pair with a public hanging. Instead, the tone stays consistent and the collection marches along, rendering everything in a tonal lull ... By closing his collection with an embrace of realism, Sayrafiezadeh leaves us with the understanding that in every iteration, we’ve been reading about America all along. Its doldrums, flaws, shortcomings, and the myriad of characters that grow and thrive within its borders.
Fatalism and dread, mollified by irony, stretch across these stories like a scrim of smoke from distant wildfires ... The American author writes in sparse, thoughtful sentences constructed from the narrators’ physical and emotional surroundings ... Originally published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, the stories collected in American Estrangement are told with a subtle sense of anticipation from lives suspended between hope and resignation.
... provoking ... Sayrafiezadeh’s assured writing works in contrast with his discontented, stumbling, watching, and waiting characters who are plagued by the titular estrangement and its undermining consequences.
... [a] lyrical, funny, and disquieting collection ... A lyrical sequence of stories about infinitely various forms of personal and familial and political estrangement that we fragile humans allow to define our lives? All of the above? Check. Lyrical, funny, smart, and heartbreaking.
Sayrafiezadeh’s rich collection...features poignant stories of characters reflecting on their parents and navigating mismatched jobs ... But the futuristic 'Fairground,' about a man taking his preteen stepson to see an execution, feels out of place among the realist entries. Nevertheless, Sayrafiezadeh vividly captures his characters’ misplaced optimism, which is what makes these stories so moving.
