Bone By Bone [Hardcover]

Gary Krist (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 1994

For the Garden State, his 1988 collection of short stories, Gary Krist received the highly prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The reviews were entusiastic. "Smart and tender short stories written with enticing crispness...Krist is a remarkable writer, and just starting," said the Los Angeles Times. Bone by Bone, like the Garden State, takes its characters from the middle class of New Jersey, adding Brooklyn and upstate New York. Children, lovers, senior citizens; salesmen, morticians, college administrators. People of every possible sexual persuasion-including those who are not sure. But while Krist's humor thrives, his canvas now has darker, deeper tones as he explores the loneliness of misfits, the pain of separations, and the uneasiness of everyday relationships. A thought provoking, different, memorable collection of short stories, beautifully written.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Probing the quiet depths of suburban desperation, Krist ( The Garden State ) extends the lessons of Cheever and Updike while steering his second short-story collection in some decidedly odd directions. The author has a knack for creating characters who teeter between the ordinary and the ridiculous, and he is at his best when combining humor or empathy with a conventional situation turned sideways or upside down. "Ever Alice," the tale of a casual lover who turns out to be a near-femme fatale, opens with the delightful teaser, "The first thing she ever did to me was ruin Emily Dickinson." "Hungry," set in Westchester, relates the adventures of Frank, an assistant embalmer who decides to move to Hungry, Alaska, and finds half the residents of his town eager to come along for the ride. On the more serious side, "Baggage" conveys the anguish of a man who decides to leave a relationship as his lover faces the steady decline caused by her cerebral palsy. Lesser entries are emotionally effective but have plots that lean toward stereotype. "Eclipse" captures the chagrin of a newly divorced man who's about to be displaced, while the three "Erickson Stories" confront the decline and fall of a marriage. Krist is a promising talent, a banner carrier for the long-awaited renaissance of the short story.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In his welcome second collection of polished and perceptive stories, Krist ( The Garden State , Harcourt, 1988) compassionately and humorously limns the lives of people in trouble. In "Baggage," a man's friends jauntily gather to help him move; everyone knows but no one mentions that he is leaving his crippled girlfriend. The lovely, bittersweet "Eclipse" chronicles a divorced man's outing with his sons to watch the solar eclipse. As each tale unfolds, characters and situations become more unconventional: in "Bone by Bone," a woman cuts herself off from the outside world as she retreats into insanity; and "Medicated" shows a widow still fragile after the senseless murder of her husband beginning a dangerous relationship with a mentally unstable man. Three related stories movingly explore a disintegrating marriage from the son's point of view; in the third, "Numbers," Krist artfully evokes a boy's coming of age at the time of the Vietnam draft lottery. Recommended for most collections.
- Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (April 20, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151820643
• ISBN-13: 978-0151820641
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,455,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Before turning to narrative nonfiction with The White Cascade and his current project, City of Scoundrels (coming in April 2012), Gary Krist wrote three novels--Bad Chemistry, Chaos Theory, and Extravagance--and two short-story collections--The Garden State and Bone by Bone. He has been a regular book reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and The Washington Post Book World. His satirical op-eds have appeared in The New York Times and Newsday, and his stories, articles, and travel pieces have been featured in National Geographic Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Playboy, The New Republic, Esquire, and on National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts." His stories have also been anthologized in such collections as Men Seeking Women, Writers' Harvest 2, and Best American Mystery Stories. He has been the recipient of The Stephen Crane Award, The Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, Readable, Often Profound, April 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Bone By Bone (Hardcover)

I read this after reading Krist's great thriller BAD CHEMISTRY. This collection is entirely different in some ways, but just as compelling. Krist gets into the heads of so many different kinds of people, and he always convinces. The last story especially stays with you long after you close the book. Best of all, things really happen in this collection, not like some literary collections, where there's so much navel-gazing that you want to scream. This collection is full of everyday drama occurring in the lives of everyday people--but somehow, through the lens of Krist's art--it all becomes extraordinary.