The Nimrod Flipout

Customer Reviews

• When he's good, he's good . . .  Apr 21, 2006 (21 of 21 found this helpful)

  There are many fantastic short stories in this collection, _The Nimrod Flipout_, by Israeli author Etgar Keret. There are also many that are reminiscent of first drafts from a night-school creative writing class. When he's good, Keret is a fantastic new talent, full of humor and existential angst, but when he's not - he's trite, cliche, and boring - one more young guy writing about getting stoned and laid.
  
  The titular story "The Nimrod Flipout", is one of the best in the entire collection. Three young men are possessed, in turn, by the spirit of their friend, Nimrod, who killed himself after his girlfriend broke up with him. [Variety is also not Keret's strong suit. There are at least two other stories where someone kills themselves because they've been dumped.] After the narrator, the last to succumb to the spirit of his deceased friend, the possession repeats itself starting over again with Miron, the first to be possessed. It's a touching story about the frivolity of youth, and deeply tragic, as well; its also one of the funniest stories in the collection.
  
  "Fatso", the opening story, I also loved. It is about a guy whose girlfriend turns into a fat, drunk, soccer-loving man after the sun goes down, and how, after spending many nights going out and watching soccer at the bar with this character, he begins to love his girlfriend, too.
  
  This collection has its shining moments, and is highly recommended to fans of short fiction. However, don't be surprised if some of the stories dissapoint.

• so-so  Apr 8, 2006 (21 of 24 found this helpful)

  Some of these stories are brilliant, first round knockouts. Others are shtick-yawns. The best are like the wondrous short-short stories of Spencer Holst. The worst are whines from the slacker you'd never listen to for five minutes if you bumped into them at a bar. Buy the book for the wonderful, but expect a very mixed bag.
  

• Israeli Magical Realism  Jan 1, 2008 (3 of 3 found this helpful)

  Who knew the Magical Realist mantle would end up in Tel Aviv? (There's no better place for it!) This is a somewhat uneven collection of short stories, thus the missing star. However, it's extremely rare to find a short story collection where that isn't the case.
  
  Maybe he gets half a star back, and rounded up to the nearest star, because most of these tiny fables are incredibly good. Several are snort-wine-out-your-nose funny, some are perfectly sly, and others are sweet or poignant without sentimentality. A few lumber along unfulfilled, but just a few. (And they're really short.)
  
  He's very a fine writer even in translation, with clear eyes and no fear.

• Sometimes brilliant. Other times not.   Apr 25, 2008 (2 of 2 found this helpful)

  This book is a bit of a grab bag. It's a jumble of great and not-so-great stories, and you take what you get.
  
  Some of the stories are absolutely fantastic, creative, evocative, and perfectly told. Often, these excellent stories elicited strong reactions from me, or made me smile at their strange, wonderful, and twisted genius. The first story of the book, "Fatso," is such a gem of a story (in structure, in its strangeness, in style, in images, in character, in a surprising dose of magical realism) that, in addition to reading it four or five times, I'm also going to photocopy it, and send it to two friends. I think they'll find it excellent as well.
  
  Other stories are not nearly as good.
  
  But, after reading several of the other Amazon reviews of this book, I wonder: perhaps all of the stories are incredible, and some just appeal to different kinds of people from others. Several reviewers and readers seem to agree that this book has some excellent and some not-so-excellent stories, but do they all agree about which are which? I saw that at least one reviewer really appreciated the book's title story "The Nimrod Flipout." But this was one of the stories with which I was thoroughly UN-impressed. It didn't move or excite me, and the writing didn't seem all that compelling. On the other hand, I absolutely loved "Halibut" - it is one of my favorite stories of all time. Each of the occurrences it describes is brilliantly timed, and the whole thing fits together in a brilliantly peculiar way. But, I wonder, did everyone else think that this story was excellent? I don't know.
  
  So maybe all of the stories are excellent, and some appeal to people like me, and others appeal to different people. It seems possible. I'd be curious to know what other people think.

• Creative and surreal, this author sure has a twisted mind!  Aug 6, 2009 (1 of 1 found this helpful)

  The word "edgy" came to mind as I quickly read these 30 very short short stories by this young Israeli writer. He has a unique point of view and speaks in a voice all his own. All of these stories are surreal and weird. Some are funny, some are sad and all of them are infused with a particularly Israeli adolescent male's point of view. Themes such as suicide, mental illness, death, infidelity and loyalty of dogs and out-of-control relationships all come together in this eclectic mixture of short stories.
  
  This author certainly has a twisted mind and I was always surprised at his creativity. The stories made me uncomfortable even though I was aware that the writer had complete control of his craft and was trying to say something. Because I was reading this book as an assignment for a book discussion group I forced myself to finish it. I found it also refreshing to see how this author's mind worked.
  
  I definitely recommend this book for those readers like me who look for something unique and different. It is a skewed view of the world that is not always pleasant. But, honestly, I hated every minute of it.