Gone Crazy Out There [Paperback]

Francesca Rochberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2008

"The day he drove away for the last time he acted almost like it were no different from his going to the store and would be back soon. He stood at the back door looking at her as though there would be a next time. But after he closed the door gently behind him, pushing on it until the lock clicked, she stood in the house and knew there would be no next time." In a powerful debut collection of seventeen stories exploring the unpredictable dynamics of love, fertility, and betrayal, Francesca Rochberg portrays with unnerving and unstinting intimacy the unraveling of a marriage. Set in the American West, from the California desert to British Columbia, the story of a couple is unveiled from many angles. Their story has one beginning but many endings and moves from realism to surrealism, leaving it to the reader to decide where the boundary, if any, lies between real and imagined. With a sensitive, bold, and analytic voice, Gone Crazy Out There offers a lyrical vision of the unfathomable mysteries of love and its fading. Francesca Rochberg lives in Berkeley, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 172 pages
• Publisher: Kennedy & Boyd (August 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904999816
• ISBN-13: 978-1904999812
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,769,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Focusing on life and how it ranges from mundane to surreal, February 6, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gone Crazy Out There (Paperback)

From Mexico to Canada and beyond, life rages on. "Gone Crazy Out There" is Francesca Rochberg's debut collection of short stories. Focusing on life and how it ranges from mundane to surreal, she tells stories with many different setting set all over the west coast. Moving, "Gone Crazy Out There" has countless situations that many a reader will relate to.

3.0 out of 5 stars One story, told many ways, December 28, 2011

By 

M. Terrell (San Francisco CA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gone Crazy Out There (Paperback)

This series of stories is really just one, all too familiar story: a betrayed wife left to wonder why love ended, and to ruminate about the younger woman who replaced her (with a couple of attempts to see it from the straying husband's point of view). And yet, perhaps because of the intensity of the feelings stirred up by the betrayal, there is a compelling quality to the stories, and they do convey all too clearly the big and small fractures that can cripple and ultimately destroy a marriage. They also suggest the transformations that people make in the face of love, and of loss.