Author Etgar Keret is known for his uncanny ability to cover an incredible amount of ground in an extremely short story. His writing is at times funny, satirical, dark, and profound, and his narratives intertwine the abstract and the everyday in creative and surprising ways.
In Grab the Cuckoo by the Tail, a short story from Keret’s Suddenly, A Knock on the Door, Uzi attempts to cheer up his friend Dedi, depressed after the end of a failed romance, by convincing him they will get rich by investing in the stock market. In just ten minutes, Grab the Cuckoo by the Tail will simultaneously leave you thoroughly satisfied and hungry for more Etgar Keret.
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[Keret] deserves full marks for chutzpah . . . His work zings with imaginative conceits, clever asides and self-conscious twists. Yet there is also an easygoing quality to his writing that makes the 37 stories collected here instantly likeable . . . his stories assume an anecdotal style that gives them an air of spontaneity, as if he were relating them over a cup of coffee in one of the Tel Aviv cafes frequented by his characters . . . Keret's willingness to develop quirky concepts (one story features a magic, talking goldfish) would seem to grant him a place alongside such idiosyncratic writers as Robert Walser, Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut and Italo Calvino. But if his work is sometimes reminiscent of these writers, it also carves out its own territory.
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James Ley, The Sydney Morning Herald