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Had A Good Time
Stories From American Postcards
by Robert Olen Butler
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain' uses the messages written on his collection of early 20th-century postcards as inspiration for these 15 short stories.
Atlantic Monthly Press, 267 pages
07/01/2004
$23.00
ISBN: 0802117775
Fiction
Short Stories
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Booklist Donna Seaman
Scintillating, soulful, and surprising, Butler's virtuoso stories are deeply satisfying. [1 May 2004, p.1482]
Kirkus Reviews
Assured, accomplished, and another intriguing change of pace from an adventurous writer who refuses to be pigeonholed. [1 Jun 2004, p.506]
Library Journal Jim Coan
Smoothly constructed and emotionally vibrant. [15 Apr 2004, p.128]
Boston Globe Roland Merullo
"Had a Good Time" left me feeling the way I feel after reading a friend's postcard: intrigued but not fulfilled, tantalized by the limitless variety of place and time and character, but wanting to bury myself deeper in their complexity.
Chicago Tribune Michael Upchurch
Butler pulls off what he's after in a good half of the book. Even where he doesn't pull it off, his shortcomings have an admirable ambition to them.
Entertainment Weekly Ben Spier
Uneven but affecting.
Village Voice Mark Swartz
Viewing stories set a century ago through the lens of Vietnam lifts Had a Good Time from the historical-fiction ghetto.
Washington Post Thomas Mallon
The stories in Had a Good Time don't rise to the same bravura heights [as 'Tabloid Dreams'], but the results are a consistently entertaining display of this Pulitzer prizewinner's varied skills.
Los Angeles Times Ben Ehrenreich
Butler's attempts to work his way inside the minds of their authors often cannot compare to the cards' own mysterious intimacies. [2 Nov 2004]
Publishers Weekly
An ambitions writing exercise that even in his assured hands yields mixed results. [12 Apr 2004, p.34]
San Francisco Chronicle John Freeman
Dimpled by cliches and drippy bits of hokum Americana, it is far and away Butler's worst book to date.
The New York Times Book Review Christopher Benfey
The empathy so abundantly on show in ''A Good Scent'' gets into the first-person narratives of ''Had a Good Time'' only rarely.
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