CluckingBell

My first Elmore Leonard, and while I had heard that his writing style was rather pointedly minimalist, I found it so sparse that a couple times I wasn't even sure what had just happened. But I seemed to enjoy the later stories more than those earlier in the book, which may indicate there was a bit of a 'learning curve' to reading his work. Once I got into the stories, it seemed like there was often a small twist at the end that made me think, "THAT was the point of this story?" Different than a lot of short stories I've read in that the twist was so distracting that I didn't wonder what happened to the characters at all; it was almost like the twist completely erased all that had gone before, so I didn’t have any unresolved tension. I don't like feeling manipulated by modern short stories, but I guess I do like the unresolved tension that leaves me thinking about them long after I've stopped reading. For that reason, some of these stories missed their mark for me.Still, I'd probably like to try a novel by Leonard.