How to Get Home: A Novella and Stories [Hardcover]

Bret Lott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1996

A novella based on the same characters as Lott's Jewel (an Oprah selection) along with 16 short stories.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The undercurrents, both numinous and tragic, in the lives of grocery-store clerks, salesmen, janitors and other ordinary folk are revealed in this breathtaking second story collection (after A Dream of Old Leaves) from novelist Lott. Thanks to incisive, empathetic characterization and graceful prose, these 16 stories and one novella of often difficult situations?adultery, job loss, the death of a spouse?exude energy and wisdom. In "How to Get Home," Paul, a salesman, is in the hospital, felled by a mysterious, life-threatening illness. Lott vivifies the strange details of such an experience: how time loses its coherence as Paul sleeps away entire days and watches soap operas where "People lived lives, worked, made love, killed one another, all simultaneously"; how recovery can dislocate a life as surely as sickness. An edgy lyricism inhabits "Lights," in which a young woman, tired of arguing with her husband, becomes almost transcendently aware of all the lights that surround her, and of their healing effect. In the novella, "After Leston," Lott reprises Jewel Hilburn, the title character of his novel Jewel, as the Mississippi native makes a life for herself and her retarded daughter in Redondo Beach after the death of her husband. Lott writes intelligent, poignant stories that distill the beautiful and painful truths of the everyday.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

These stories, culled from everyday life experiences, are not dramatic. Rather, they portray our struggles to survive the quiet challenges of daily existence. Lott's (Reed Beach, LJ 9/1/93) unpretentious characters could be any of us: Paul's self-esteem suffers when he loses his job; Lee and Carol look at houses they cannot afford; Jewel makes sacrifices for her mentally handicapped daughter; a husband realizes the complexities of adultery; a family pet dies; a widower grieves; a salesman ponders the death of an associate, brutally killed "on the route"; and a father takes his soon-to-be-driving teenagers to the site of a fatal accident. These "down home" folks work through their lives with smiles, tears, hope and despair. Recommended for larger collections.?Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 201 pages
• Publisher: John F Blair Pub; 1ST edition (July 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895871408
• ISBN-13: 978-0895871404
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,854,855 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bret Lott is the author of thirteen books, most recently the novel Dead Low Tide(Random House 2008); other books include the story collection The Difference Between Women and Men, the nonfiction book Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life, and the bestselling novels Jewel, an Oprah Book Club pick, and A Song I Knew by Heart. His work has appeared in, among other places, The Yale Review, The New York Times, The Georgia Review and in dozens of anthologies. Born in Los Angeles, he received his BA in English from Cal State Long Beach in 1981, and his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984, where he studied under James Baldwin. From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching. His honors include having been named Fulbright Senior American Scholar and writer-in-residence to Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel; having spoken on Flannery O'Connor at The White House; and being appointed a member of the National Council on the Arts. He and his wife, Melanie, and live in Hanahan, South Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Everyone should read Bret Lott, June 19, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Get Home: A Novella and Stories (Hardcover)

Many of these stories are so short and spare that you feel you may have missed something along the way. But they linger with you long after you've finished reading. They are about normal people much like ourselves, and they face problems and heartbreaks the same as ours. Mr. Lott is a masterful writer