The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God

I've been a book club slacker and haven't made it to the last couple meetings. I try to read the books anyway, even if I can't make it to the meetings, but that doesn't always happen. The latest pick, which I'm still not sure if I'll be able to make it for, was Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories.

With the exception of the last piece, the stories are all very short and some are much better than others. (I probably liked "Jetlag" and "Good Intentions" the best and I wasn't wild about the longer piece, "Kneller's Happy Campers" about an afterlife for people who committed suicide.) I think there can be a nice punch packed in a short, short story, but as a whole, I think that very short stories (2-4 pages) are extremely limiting and not conducive to much depth of any kind. The cover calls them "warped and wonderful" short stories. I probably wouldn't have used the word "warped" to describe them, but also can't argue with it. It's a short book (130 pages) with a lot of blank pages, so it's a quick read. The book states that Keret is "undoubtedly the most popular writer among Israeli youth" and I can understand the large draw to his work by a younger generation as it's witty and a bit dark, interesting and creative.