The Book of Lost Fathers: Stories (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction) [Hardcover]

Robley Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction | Publication Date: June 12, 2001

"Why is it the worst things happen when you're most relaxed and your head's empty of everything serious?" These words, from the narrator of the story "Grief," are at the heart of The Book of Lost Fathers, the new collection of short fiction by Robley Wilson. These stories depict ordinary, recognizable people dealing with loneliness, loss, and mortality. A woman and her father experience an earthquake, and the incident reinforces the frailty of the dying man. A man must confront his fiancée's past when he realizes the identity of the "stranger" they meet on vacation. A best man arrives late for his friend's wedding, only to learn that the groom has died hours before.

Combining an evocative and compassionate style with familiar characters and enduring messages, Wilson treats fundamental questions of love, suffering, and humanity. His "lost fathers" provide a common thread that weaves together stories about fathers, husbands, and lovers, past and present -- and the women whose lives they change.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in various locales ranging from small New England towns to Florida resorts, Midwestern farms to earthquake-ridden California, this haunting collection of stories is told from the points of view of jilted women, widowed wives, bewildered children and grieving men. Characters struggle to deal with the absence of fathers, whether from desertion, natural death or the "gradual dissolving away" of family life. One of the standouts, "Dorothy and Her Friends," takes a bizarre twist as Dorothy, who lives in a Boston apartment with her bitter, religious mother, begins an affair with a traveling evangelist. Deserted by her father at age 12, she now wonders, "What in the world was it that made men leave marriage, abandon family as if the truly important lay somewhere else?" For Dorothy, her father's legacy continues as men enter and leave her life "as swift as rare, intractable birds." Often Wilson simply refers to characters as "the wife" or "the son," emphasizing how family relationships mold their identities. In "Trespass," a divorced architect faces his estranged father's death and the fact that his ex-wife was included in the will, but he was not. "Florida" presents the postdivorce perspective of "lost" fathers like Fowler, who vacations with his fianc‚e and her two daughters in an attempt to mesh splintered families into a new whole. The last image in the final story, "A Day of Splendid Omens," finds a grieving woman cradling her young daughter as she whispers stories about the girl's dead father. The image captures the tone of the entire collection, in which Wilson adeptly illustrates in an unsentimental manner the sometimes devastating powers of family, love and loss.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Robley Wilson's mastery of the short-story form is obvious from the first paragraph of his fifth collection, The Book of Lost Fathers... All of Robley Wilson's skill comes to bear in 'Dorothy and Her Friends,' the lone novella in The Book of Lost Fathers... Wilson's sensitivity and probity make this piece as psychologically complex and as well-crafted as the rest of his fine collection." -- Judy Doenges, Washington Post Book World

"This haunting collection of stories is told from the points of view of jilted women, widowed wives, bewildered children and grieving men. Characters struggle to deal with the absence of fathers, whether from desertion, natural death or the 'gradual dissolving away' of family life... The last image in the final story, 'A Day of Splendid Omens,' finds a grieving woman cradling her young daughter as she whispers stories about the girl's dead father. The image captures the tone of the entire collection, in which Wilson adeptly illustrates in an unsentimental manner the sometimes devastating powers of family, love and loss." -- Publishers Weekly

"In all these stories, Wilson exercises a great but quiet skill. His devices are subtle and often startling, and he constructs each story so that the happenstance of an individual life takes on a consuming interest. His unobtrusive craftsmanship draws the reader closer to the characters and to the story itself... Wilson's stories accomplish what they are supposed to -- not the self-reflective showing-off of what the author can do, but the complete involvement of the reader in a true reflection of life." -- Edward Southern, Orlando Sentinel

"[A] highly recommendable collection. No one gets out of these stories without having wisdom stuck to their fingertips... As hard in grim fact as these stories are (and they hang together like a neighborhood), they are nevertheless refreshing. In a time when fiction is increasingly dominated by the fantastic, a solid inquiry into the lives of ordinary folks is gratifying. Wilson's characters live next door; they appear in our bathroom mirrors; they bear the spiritual and physical afflictions we do." -- John Kennedy, Antioch Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; First Edition edition (June 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801867177
• ISBN-13: 978-0801867170
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,114,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robley Wilson is the author of three novels: "The World Still Melting" (2005), "Splendid Omens" (2004) and "The Victim's Daughter" (1991). His new story collection, "Who Will Hear Your Secrets?", will be published in spring 2012 by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilson is co-editor with his wife, Susan Hubbard, of "100% Pure Florida Fiction", a short-story anthology.
His five previous short story collections are: "The Pleasures of Manhood" (1977), "Living Alone" (1978), "Dancing for Men" (1983, winner of the 1982 Drue Heinz Literature Prize), "Terrible Kisses" (1989, a New York Times Notable Book), and "The Book of Lost Fathers" (2001).
Wilson taught creative writing at the University of Northern Iowa from 1963 to 1996, and from 1969 to 2000 was editor of the North American Review, a university-owned magazine which twice won the National Magazine Award for Fiction administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
"Everything Paid For" (2000) is Wilson's most recent poetry collection. His first, "Kingdoms of the Ordinary", was the 1986 Agnes Lynch Starrett prizewinner. His second, "A Pleasure Tree", won the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize for 1990. A chapbook, "A Walk Through the Human Heart", was published in 1996 by Helicon Nine editions.
He has been visiting writer at Beloit College, the University of Iowa, Pitzer College and the University of Central Florida, and was a 1983-84 Guggenheim Fellow in fiction. He held a 1995-96 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. He now lives in Orlando, Florida with his wife and five demanding cats.