A winner of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize, this collection of 47 stories includes flash and full-length works loosely based on the lives of the writer's parents' in the 1960s to the present day.
Carry Her Home’s stories are uniformly well written and interesting ... Bock...gives free literary rein to her vivid imagination, and tells two tales, each of which in its own way is beautifully moving ... Bock shows how much emotional clout a talented writer can pack into a half-page-long narrative ... I love this book.
Using short chapters, some only half a page, she tells her family’s story; sorrows, vacations, struggles, and losses emerge in a series of short strokes that read like a fever dream ... The language is taut, rhythmic, and the details are lovely, sometimes funny ... Although Bock works hard to depict the period, the characters are in generic situations with generic thoughts [in the book's second section] ... unlike the first section, which soars, the second never quite gets off the ground ... Fortunately, the third section returns with a lovely complex story ... Two remaining sections contain a clutch of flash fiction related to the main story not in content, but in mood. These stories are entertaining, occasionally illuminating, but lack the cohesion and velocity of the opening. Still, Bock has taken a risk with her unusual structure and, in many ways, succeeded. Her family, especially her relationship with Pop, will stay with the reader.
In this autobiographical and imaginative book, Bock imbues her parents’ story with compassion, rich detail, and cumulative power ... While each story can stand on its own, it is when they accrue that the book’s power is fully realized, giving it the depth and detail of a novel ... Experimental and genre-bending, these stories bring together the introspection of memoir with the imaginative detail and potential of fiction.
