Some, like elephants
Abroad Writer’s Conference
October 2012
These Jet Jewels by Laura Glen Louis
poetry review by Jane Downs
The image of elegy as a “jet jewel” conflates death with something both precious and outlasting human life expectancy. Jewels are made of minerals mined from the earth. They are cut and polished for clarity and brilliance just like the words in Louis’s poems.
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East Bay Express
August 2010
Finding Rhymes for “French Roast” with Laura Glen Louis
by Annili Rufus
She prefers to write in bed, but the beds in which Laura Glen Louis dreamed up the lines in her haunting debut poetry collection Some, like elephants; her 2001 short-story collection Talking in the Dark; and other works have been all over the map — literally.
Talking In the Dark
New York Times
Sunday July 15, 2001
Both Sides of the Hyphen
by Will Blythe
The individuals in Laura Glen Louis’s Talking in the Dark may be Chinese-Americans new to the West Coast, but more than anything else they are characters for whom the experience of love demands the ultimate migration — from safety to omnipresent danger…Fierce and astringent… [Talking in the Dark] has its share of superb and wise stories.
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Barnes & Nobel Discover Great New Writers
Spring, 2001
Laura Glen Louis’s résumé includes work as a film editor, and her skill comes shining through in this debut short-story collection, Talking in the Dark. Louis has obviously benefited from hearing the famous writing axiom, “Show, don’t tell.” Her stories don’t shout but whisper in the reader’s ear, from the opening story, “Tea,” where a young woman, Sheila, learns an important lesson from her tai chi instructor, to “Fur,” in which a prosperous widower falls for a gold digger who works in his bank. The characters in Louis’s stories are full of a quiet emotionalism, even as they initiate change in their lives, occasionally venturing into dangerous waters. Her stories, many of which are set in the San Francisco Bay area, are wrapped around a subtle theme: how love involves risk and the opening of one’s self to the unknown. In “Her Slow and Steady,” a longtime couple decide to have a child, only to lose their young daughter to SIDS. Two mothers, both with prophetic dreams, also fail to keep their children from harm in “Thirty Yards;” and a divorced couple’s tryst in a coffee shop is thwarted in “Rudy’s Two Wives.” The title story reveals an explorative conversation between two people, coming to the awareness that there is much one cannot know about another. Peppered with the occasional word in Ms. Louis’s native Cantonese dialect, her stories are rich morsels, to be savored, not gulped.
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Boston Review
2001
Talking in the Dark by Laura Glen Louis
by Randall Curb
“A debut collection of lean, sinewy prose and tightly compressed emotional implications, all related to matters of the heart… Understatement seems to come naturally to her. Economy is her watchword.”
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O Magazine
April 2001
Places in the Heart
by Lisa Shea
“Striking debut collection…Spare, insightful, and refreshingly candid, Louis’ collection finds strength in vying equally for the readers head and heart…Engaging, enlightening tales.”
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The Hartford Courant
March 18, 2001
A Question Of Balance
by Elizabeth Pokempner
For the troubled characters in Laura Glen Louis’ eloquent debut collection, “Talking in the Dark,” there are no earth-shattering resolutions or moments of blinding enlightenment… All of the stories in this award-winning writer’s collection begin with unexpected, jarring events, then trace the often devastating fallout that ensues.
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Library Journal
2001
“A stunning new collection…The tales [Louis] spins are universal ones of love and loss…Highly recommended.”
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The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune
July 4, 2001
Hope Springs Eternal in Collection of Short Stories
by Jules Verdone
“Surprising debut…What Louis offers is a rhythmic notion of ebb and flow, give and take, collapse and reconstruction…She has created stories with depth, and the people who inhabit them consistently ring true.”
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The Detroit Free Press
2002
“Louis is as interested in the internal debate of her characters as in their actions, which gives her stories an exquisite…stillness. Her precision of language means ‘Dark’ should appeal to readers who think that too much of modern fiction depends on the approximately right word or image–and not the exactly right ones. For connoisseurs.”
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Publishers Weekly
February 19, 2001
Talking in the Dark, Stories
“In spare refreshing prose, Louis writes of characters burned by love and searching for reprieve in this debut collection…It is easy to see a gift for the compact form in this newcomer whose honesty doesn’t always require a perfectly stitched-up denouement.”
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Poets & Writers
Literary Tastings: A Flight of First Fiction
July/August 2001
by Carolyn T. Hughes
“There is…an archetypal quality to her work in a way many of her characters are made, and at times undone, by love.”
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The Washington Post Book World
Sunday April 8, 2001
Short Stories: Tales of internal exile, loneliness, unpleasant pairings and unlikely desires.
by Elizabeth Roca
“The excitement of reading Laura Glen Louis’ debut story collection…derives not only from its prose but also from the possibilities she sees in her characters…Louis guides her characters through their changes with a firm, compassionate hand.”
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Newsday
April 28, 2001
Short Stories / The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Susan Salter Reynolds
“Talking in the Dark,” Laura Glen Louis’ first collection of short stories, is full of silences between people. In spite of their desperation, her characters are obedient to their fates, which spring organically from their actions.”
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Nob Hill Gazette
May 2001
Talking in the Dark: Tales For Thought
by Janice Farrar-Titus
A collection of short stories — you pick it up for a quick read, perhaps on BART or at the dentist’s office. Maybe you’ll return later and peruse another story or two. That’s not the case with Talking in the Dark. Here, a first story entices one to another and another until, in a few hours, the reader has pored over every page to the end. But for many more than a few hours, that reader will be mulling over these stories, thanks to Bay Area author, Laura Glen Louis’ deft way with words. With frugal and meticulous language, Louis imagines worlds that are layered and complete… The author brings her characters as close together as she can, then examines the gulf that still remains…”
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San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday May 27, 2001
Talking in the Dark by Laura Glen Louis
by Robin Beeman
“Beautifully wrought stories…Louis’ sophisticated and fluid use of a shifting point-of-view works to underscore the complexity of what might at first appear to be a simple tale.”
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“This collection heralds the arrival of a major new talent in American fiction. These stories are extraordinary; they move like express trains, then slow down at just the right moment and provide unerringly accurate and poignant insights into what is too often hushed in the human heart.”
Robert Bausch
Author of A Hole in the Earth
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“Laura Glen Louis is such a careful writer, which works to marvelous effect, because her material is incendiary.”
J.D. Landis, author of Longing
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