Fiction. AT OR NEAR THE SURFACE, winner of the 2008 Michael Rubin Chapbook Award chosen by Tin House managing editor Holly MacArthur, is a collection of short fiction that, with original language and lapidary prose, explores the yearnings of a cast of characters we think we know: a young woman visited by the hand and lung and toes of the baby she miscarried in Macy's; a married couple deformed by their web of adulteries; an elderly man remembering his wife as he sets his deformed pigeons free; a chemistry teacher's surprising response to the shooting death of a student.
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In fifteen wonderful stories, Jenny Pritchett stirs up a remarkable amount of grit and glory. These characters, as they stumble through their loves and losses, will remind you just how dangerous it is to be alive. --Robin Romm, author of The Mother Garden and The Mercy Papers.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Daring Flight,
This review is from: At or Near the Surface (Paperback)
This collection of shorts is a daring effort, closer at times to poetry, with that genre's spareness, and a range of length from just a paragraph or two to more conventional work. Most of the stories have a similar flat voice, unadorned, with simple phrasing. Even names seem in short supply: Pritchett uses just a handful of names in the stories, and in one, has two characters with the same name (and appearance). There is realism here, but also wonderful flights of fancy and magic rendered in prose so spare the events seem real.
Because Pritchett makes some huge creative leaps with her narratives, she sees a share of failures among her successes, where the story falls flat. It is like communicating only with hand signals; you know your interlocutor aspires to mean something, to communicate a particular message, but you are at a complete loss figuring out precisely what that message of meaning might be. In the very last story, a woman flings herself among the clouds using her own hammock; I found myself wondering whether it really had the power to propel her to that altitude. There is wonderful talent here and the failures are worth muddling through to find the gems.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved every story! 15 nights of great sleep after reading them in bed,
This review is from: At or Near the Surface (Paperback)
This was such a great read. Pritchett is a new type of voice and I loved the style and length of her stories. I am so glad I found this book. It is my new birthday gift to pretty much everyone I know!
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