A Different Bed Every Time by Jac Jemc

A Different Bed Every Time Reviews

• 
  David

  I've been waiting for this one anxiously, but there is so much I couldn't possibly have expected. The conceptual flow in the prose is often so unusual that I'd be thrilled to be reading even if it doesn't go anywhere...though it certainly does. Strange, cutting, and moving. There's something to marvel at on every page.
• 
  Paul Cockeram

  She writes prose the way a poet would. The whole story is something else. The plot is actually a setting. The most unusual characters somehow feel familiar. A lot of the time, one sentence fails to connect with another in any discernible way.
  
  There are moments to enjoy, which make sense in the way of a lyric. Most of them are hostile to sense and coherence in the most aggressive ways possible. She spits in the face of convention. The world was born when the devil yawned.
  
  Even the people who like this book won't remember it. They will recall a sensation of having experienced strange language, sometimes even thrilling juxtapositions of image and expression. They might recollect moments. But whole stories? Heartfelt relationships between characters, or between the reader and a character? This book doesn't tell stories.
• 
  Tyler

  A Different Bed Every Time is a collection of short stories, and when I say short, I mean short. Several are only two to three pages, and a few were even shorter than that. This collection is perfect for reading during the morning commute on the train, or, like me, for devouring in the span of one afternoon.

  Jemc has carried on with her instinctual sense of poetry and signature abstract style. The stories all read like metaphors, and even if there isn't a moral at the end of the story, they kept my brain digging for more insight. The surrealism of her writing makes the stories seem, though they are standalone stories with no self-references, like they all exist within the same strange context, and the same weird world.

  I was reminded of the book reports we used to do in high school, and how we'd read a fairly straightforward book (think Frankenstein, or The Great Gatsby, or Catcher in the Rye), and have to analyze it to absolute death, spending hours explaining symbolism that was pretty obvious to the eye. Not to say that these books aren't symbolic, significant, and enthralling, but we get it, the green light is Gatsby's fantasy and Daisy is the American Dream. We get it.

  Jemc forces us to scratch and claw our way deeper into the heart of her stories. The impact isn't face-value; it is buried beneath many layers of prose and imagery and abstraction. Even then, the morals may never really appear to us; the stories are ultimately open to interpretation. Personally, I find this desperate digging and all of gratification incredibly gratifying. A book that makes me think, and also keeps me thinking, is a perfect book, and this, A Different Bed Every Time is a perfect book.
• 
  Sylvia

  I gave this 2 for a small minority of pieces in this book which I thought were good, clever and interesting. The rest were over the top poetry like ramblings that was just lost on me. I don’t want to have to read every single line 6 times to try and work out what is going on. I just want to enjoy a collection of short stories which this is certainly not. It’s a selection of nonsense creative writing pieces, no more than about 7 pages max, most a page and a half, one was a paragraph. Did not enjoy it at all, I fell asleep multiple times trying to get through it and I won’t be reading anything else by this author.
• 
  Téa Jones-Yelvington

  I am halfway through this, and am continutally startled by Jac's sentences, her poet's prose. There are some recurrent themes here: Familial expectations and disappointments; mortality of loved ones; the deep, ghostliness of ambivalence, and the isolation of existing while longing to construct new realities through language. Some enabling luminaries that have crossed my mind while reading: Therese Svoboda, Lynne Tillman, Danielle Dutton, Gary Lutz. I hope I spelled those all correctly.
• 
  Caitlin Snyder

  Favorites:
  
  A Violence, Marbles Loosed, Bent Back, The Wrong Sister, Judgment Day, The Crickets Try to Organize Themselves into Some Raucous Pentameter, Before We Pass This Way Again, Engrossed, Felted, A Willingness And Warning, The Tackiness of Souls, Hospitable Madness, Recipe for Her Absence, The Hush of the Party.
  
  That's a lot of favorites.
• 
  Samuel Snoek-Brown

  A stunning collection; Jemc's musical virtuosity with language and her scalpel precision with character and situation is as resonant here as it was in her debut novel, My Only Wife, but she's playing in a different key here, and the result is disarming, unsettling, and gorgeous. Some stories are stronger than others, but every story is a fist to the breastbone. Still, there is one standout, the breathtaking "Hammer, Damper," as heartbreaking and honest a rendition of grief and decline (and steadfastness in the face of both) as I've ever seen. A hard book to read in one sitting -- you'll frequently find yourself catching your breath, wanting to escape for a solitary walk -- but all the better for that. Go ahead -- take your time. This is a book to savor.
• 
  Dana Jerman

  Favorites include:
  Prowlers
  Before We Pass This Way Again
  The Crickets To Organize Themselves Into Some Raucous Pentameter
• 
  Anna

  Ranging from a single page, to several pages, the 42 stories that fill the pages of this collection are strange and poetic. Some of the stories were more prose poems than stories, but the collection is so packed and varied that one moves right into the next. It is clear that Jac Jemc is wordsmith of the highest order, whether or not I understand every word. I came to this collection after reading “The Grip of It” and needing more. I have “My Only Wife” to read next. Fair warning: if you seek a story that is traditional in its beginning, middle, and end, this collection is not going to be the one for you.
  
  From “The Dark Spot” - “I had tried to turn the weekend into a science, to make it into a game I could learn the rules for, to escape the cliche of it being difficult to be home for the holidays. If you asked me who I loved most in the world, the people I would list were under that roof, but spending four days with their adult selves, with the spouses they’d chose and the children they’d wrought and the opinions they’d formed where curiosity once lived, was more than I could manage.
  Alone in the furnace room, I thought of a person trying to remember a phone number while someone else shouted random numbers in their ear. I thought if trying to sync three clocks perfectly with only two hands. I thought of impossible pulses.
  There are times I know I’m a part of something, even when I’m not actively adding to that thing. Like the dim spot on a fluorescent sign, I can feel the other sections buzzing around me, and I know people can make sense of the words, because the light of the working parts is enough.”
  
  From “Somebody Else’s” - “I refused to admit my behavior was not normal. The outside world and I were like cracked magnets. We had been one and the same, but we’d broken apart and could now do nothing but resist. Every time I thought about leaving my home, I wondered what could be waiting for me out there and never came up with an attractive enough answer. It wasn’t even fear. That’s what I keep telling myself.”
  
  From “The Tackiness of Souls” - “Bobby isn’t interested because Minnie isn’t a conventional bombshell and she doesn’t have the confidence that must support strange beauty. Minnie isn’t interested because she’s talked to Bobby before and finds nothing beyond his jawbone appealing. There is no sexual tension. The jokes are lame on both sides.”
  
  From “The Things Which Blind Us” - “I hated when they made me wear the bear suit in public and hated it more for how comfortable it was when I was alone. A conundrum. ... At that point, I’d been confused for days, like trying to see through dense foliage. I hoped it was just the mescaline wearing off. When that effect faded, suddenly, random birds began falling from the sky every few minutes, and when I looked for them near the ground, they were nowhere.”
  
  The last “story” was like a fun love poem, called “Let Me Be Your Tugboat King” - it opens with, “Listen, I’m ready for you to come right over here, darling, and dance with me. We’re pulling in the weight of what we’re waiting for. Dance it down for me. Let me see your sequins shimmer and shake.”
• 
  Mel

  I have to start by saying I LOVE Jac's writing. "False Bingo" and "The Grip of It" are some of my favorites from the past year. However, this was just an example of why it's difficult to go backwards in an author's works.
  
  I wouldn't call most of the things in this collection stories at all, but more poetry or essays? Even with that kept in mind, it's a lot of flowery language that isn't really SAYING anything. I couldn't really tell you half of what I absorbed from this at all.
  
  Two stars because there was a story or two I enjoyed, but overall I don't recommend this one if you're looking for true short stories. And it pains me to say it!
• 
  Tammy Matthews

  The first story had me worried about what to expect of this collection, and there are a lot of stories in here similar- with people talking in poems and a sort of la di da MFA tone that made me say "who cares?" BUT I found myself dog-earring one story and then another and then another. There is a lot that emotionally resonates here, sprinkled with experimental works that I'm just not that into. Favorite hands down is "Somebody Else's."
• 
  Max

  I really think Jac Jemc is extremely talented. Her prose is captivating and lyrical. The stories are unique and often daring.
  
  I will say that I like the more, um, "straightforward" stories. The more experimental ones confound me, but I still think they're so interesting and exciting to read. This collection is getting three stars because I felt that there was a majority of those more experimental ones.
• 
  A girl called Johnie

  Oh Jac, how I wanted to love this book! You are such a marvelous writer, but this body of words left me wanting something a bit more substantial. It felt more like poetry, or strange haiku. I will keep reading your work as I am greatly aware of your unending imagination and palpable talent.
• 
  Katie

  These stories are succinct and unassuming until they take a turn into the strange and poetic. Like contemporary dark fairy tales where upon closer inspection the ordinary doesn't exist and anything could happen.
• 
  lauren

  I'm always impressed by the ability to write really short stories really well. These stories were ultra short but packed a punch. I think Jac Jemc writes in such a lyrical and horror-tinged way and I am so impressed every time I read one of her books. It's all so beautiful but with teeth.
• 
  Crystal

  These felt less like fully realized short stories than short works of poetic prose that defy convention in just about every way which can go either way for me.
• 
  Marc

  After reading The Grip Of It I was eager to read more by the author. This story collection did not disappoint, and the author’s style fits perfectly into this genre.
• 
  Andy Doye

  I love Jax’s writing, but even some of this was a little too out there for me. I had to skip several stories because I couldn’t follow what was supposed to be happening. Maybe I am just too dumb… :-)
• 
  chris

  Despite however much I tried to erase it, I had this human heart that was always showing up and milking itself into my body.
  -- "A Violence"
  
  There are times when I know I'm a part of something, even when I'm not actively adding to that thing. Like the dim spot on a fluorescent sign, I can feel the other sections buzzing around me, and I know people can make sense of the words, because the light of the working parts is enough. They can fill in that dark gap because they know what should be there. And sometimes the hardest thing is to be recognized as a part of something that I know I had nothing to do with, no matter how much I wish I did.
  -- "The Dark Spot"
  
  Remember all you've wanted in this world is for one person to call you "home."
  -- "The Tackiness of Souls"
• 
  lisa

  I have had such a craving for short stories lately, so I am glad so many collections of them are coming out this year. I picked this one up at the library, and was so charmed by the first story, "A Violence" and its imaginative images. (The first sentence was "Every night I stunned myself with gin".) As I read on, i found my attention wandering, and feeling annoyed at some of the stories, particularly the ones that were so short they were more like a page of haikus than a story. However, the stories that I liked were imaginative, beautifully written, and different. The book wasn't long enough to truly get on my nerves, and I will be recommending these to people who want to read short stories by contemporary writers.
• 
  Karin

  This is my new favorite short story collection. Well, really, it's a mix of short stories, microfiction, and poetry, I suppose. Some of the "stories" are only a page long. A lot of the sentences you'll read here might be hard to decipher in the traditional sense, but the words together create a mood. Most of them aren't plot based. This is not the kind of book you want to read quickly, even though it's short. Read a few stories at a time, really think about the sentences and the words, and I think this'll work best. I see Ms. Jemc at various book events around Chicago, I picked this one up after seeing some good reviews at the Empty Bottle during a Pop-up Book Fair. I hope she brings copies of her novel because I'll be buying that next time I see her if she has it with her.
• 
  Marisa

  Wow! Jac Jemc loves her worldplay!
  These 40 stories in under 200 pages really pack a literary punch. Some read more like poetry and some are very short, more like vignettes.
  The overlying theme is familial relationships but discuss matters like death, murder, nostalgia, lost dreams, hopelessness...yes very dire but Jemc also spins in some magical realism to make the reader decipher for themselves what is real and what isn't.
  
  Full review here:
  http://thedailydosage.com/2014/12/01/...
• 
  Great Writers Steal

  Ms. Jemc's book is chock full of short stories that pack big power. As other reviewers have noted, the beautiful prose Ms. Jemc employs is one of her biggest assets. I asked her about how she writes such striking sentences when I interviewed her for a Great Writers Steal video:
  
  
  The Great Writers Steal Experience with Jac Jemc
• 
  Shannon

  I had been seeking out A DIFFERENT BED EVERY TIME for a while, when I found it quietly sitting on the shelf where it should have been all along. I am a big fan of super-short fiction, especially when each word is like a polished, tart candy to roll on my tongue. Jac Jemc's work is delicious in this collection, and I hope to find much more, so I can steal tastes of it between all the other delights of life.
• 
  Samuel Moss

  I really loved "My Only wife". These stories are fairly different in style, more experimental and language based. I felt like in some places Jemc was relying too much on the word play to cover up for a lack of plot/character/overarching idea.
  
  Regardless it is cool to see all of these stories in one place and to see that Jemc can work in such a variety of modes and styles.
• 
  Vivienne Strauss

  While I loved this collection I can see how the mainstream reader wouldn't. I l enjoyed how unsettling they were overall, many were like a dream that you can't quite make sense of but enjoy them nonetheless. I saw some complaints that the stories seemed more like poetry than prose, I'm okay with that too. It is nice to take the path less trodden.
• 
  Frances Dinger

  A fantastic, eerie follow-up to Jac's incredible debut. If I could only read a dozen short stories for the rest of my life, at least six of these would be among the ones I selected.