Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (Paperback)

from allison.sivak

What a collection. I particularly enjoyed how Packer took her characters out of more predictable environments, startling me into rethinking some of my assumptions about race, and about African-Americans. She does this with narrative arcs as well, focusing on unusual aspects of a story on the pre-...

from RandyMetcalfe

The eight stories in Drinking Coffee Elsewhere reveal an author finding her voice and, perhaps, revelling in its timbre. The best of these stories - I'm thinking of "Brownies,", "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere," and "Geese" - show remarkable poise, thoughtfulness, and trust; trust in her readers and i...

from cblaker

All the protagonists were black and all but one were female like the author. I got the impression that many of the storeis had an autobiographical element to them. Most of the stories have bitter, sad endings. I was able to read through this book quickly, because all the stories were compelling. ...

from alexrichman

I was glad to find this in the Strand - and doubly so when I got back home to discover it's out of print in Britain! Could replace Lucia Berlin as my go-to recommendation for bookworms, as it has so many different kinds of stories, but theyall manage to be quite deeply affecting. Two thumbs up.

from Othemts

This is an excellent collection of contemporary short fiction. Packer is great at quickly establishing characters, and while the stories tend to be more slice-of-life than a traditional beginning-middle-end format, they're all the better for capturing the nuance of character developments. Stories...