I'd Like

I'd Like

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By Amanda Michalopoulou

Translated by Karen Emmerich

Publication Date: 4/1/2008

ISBN: 9781564784933

A novelist and columnist for the newspaper "Kathimerini", Michalopoulou has fashioned a baker's dozen of tart, experimental, grown-up stories for literary tastes. The most fully fleshed story is the title piece, in which the narrator, a weary painter trapped in a marriage to an even wearier writer, acts out her frustration upon meeting another, more exalted literary couple whose matrimonial malaise reflects her own. Many of the stories seem like tentative beginnings of novels; in Light, for example, an elderly widow invites her even older sister to live with her, but soon regrets her decision. Daily life seemed meaningless to her, the author writes of the older sister, and so she leaves, while her younger sibling takes solace from Mormon leaflets promising a paradise in which the two will be reunited. Pointe demonstrates how tricky the author's narrators can sometimes be, allowing the reader to believe a bored wife and mother is entertaining several lovers when the reality is much more complex. Another standout story, The Most Wonderful Moment, recounts the queasy meeting between an elderly Great Writer and the admiring woman journalist interviewing him. Michalopoulou's tales are uneven, but delightful when they hit true. — Publishers Weekly

Reviews

"An innovative collection of short stories that overturns expectations and surprises the reader, full of sarcasm, humor, and anguish, with a sob that escapes at the end--after all, that's what life is like." —Eleni Gika


"Moving against the current, Amanda Michalopoulou calls her new book a collection of short stories, though its thirteen texts read as a unified whole. After we've finished I'd Like, we realize that we have to read it again from the beginning, to reevaluate the information we've been given. And therein lies the appeal and innovation of this work."—Elizabeth Kotzia

"Michalopoulou's artless, lively style endows her narratives with sweetness, vivacity and sensitivity, softening their sharp edges. Of course, beneath the narrator's stubbornly cheerful tone we can discern a constant but muffled lament for a childhood now lost. . . . In this latest book, Michalopoulou treats her thematic obsession--the issue of writing itself--with greater daring and ingenuity than ever before." —Lina Panteleon


"An innovative collection of short stories that overturns expectations and surprises the reader, full of sarcasm, humor, and anguish, with a sob that escapes at the end--after all, that's what life is like." —Ethnos

Biographical Information

Amanda Michalopoulou was born in Athens, Greece in 1966. She has had a daily newspaper column in Kathimerini since 1990, and is the author of four novels, two short story collections, and a successful series of children's books. She has won various awards, in particular for her first short story collection, Life is Colourful Outside, and her first novel, Wishbone Memories. She currently lives in Athens.

Karen Emmerich is praised for her translations of Greek contemporary authors Rhea Galanake and Margarita Karapanou, she was awarded fellowships by the Fulbright and Onassis foundations, and in 1999, the Elizabeth Constantinides Translation Prize by the Modern Greek Studies Association. She lives in Thessaloniki, Greece.