Interior Design: Stories [Hardcover]

Philip Graham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 3, 1996

A collection of stories revolves around the idea that people are fueled by their secret personal worlds--their interior designs--such as the woman who builds a wire model of herself and hides it in her closet. 10,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The eight short stories in Interior Design, a collection by Philip Graham, author of the novel How to Read an Unwritten Language, are built on seemingly simple plots. But invariably a twist of the mind leads to unpredictable results. In "Lucky" an aging owner of a men's clothing store panics when he realizes that his suits are waiting only to be worn at funerals; in another an aspiring actress becomes a hit in a television commercial only because she plays the part so badly; in yet another a couple uses a wire figure hidden in a closet to wear the clothes the woman wore when their relationship was alive. Graham shows that reality isn't always what it seems.

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist (How to Read an Unwritten Language) and short-story writer (The Art of the Knock) Graham fills his newest story collection with a sense of the power of imagination. One by one, his characters tap their own inventive powers to alter the troubling world around them. "Another Planet" views the emotional disintegration of a shoe salesman through the haunted eyes of his young son. "Angel" begins with a boy's fascination with watchful guardian angels, then comes down to earth to consider how agonizingly difficult it is to communicate the world as we observe it to a lover, a reading audience?or even to an angelic muse. In the title story, a fanciful interior decorator fashions dwellings from her clients' dreams until she falls in love with a man strangely lacking in dreams and attempts to impose her concepts of what his dreams should be. "Beauty Marks," the most effective entry here, chronicles the evolving relationship of a young couple?recently returned from Africa where they were researching their respective doctoral theses?and their growing awareness of the demons they must dispel in order to seal their new marriage. "The Pose" depicts an out-of-work factory worker creating a female body out of wire and then hanging his wife's clothes on its limbs; meanwhile, the wife hopes that this fetish will make him see her anew. Quietly engrossing, Graham's stories illustrate the ways our souls, craving meaning, instinctively make patterns out of experience?and that this process, whether heroic or neurotic, is not all that different from the work of an artist.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (December 3, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684803720
• ISBN-13: 978-0684803722
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,599,233 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Philip Graham is the author of two story collections, The Art of the Knock and Interior Design; a novel, How to Read an Unwritten Language; and he is the co-author (with his wife, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb) of two memoirs of Africa, Parallel Worlds (winner of the Victor Turner Prize), and the forthcoming Braided Worlds. His most recent book is The Moon, Come to Earth, an expanded version of his series of McSweeney's dispatches from Lisbon.

Graham's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, North American Review, Fiction, Los Angeles Review and elsewhere, and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers Magazine, and the Washington Post. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, two Illinois Arts Council awards, and the William Peden Prize in Fiction, Graham teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is a founding editor and the current fiction editor of the literary/arts journal Ninth Letter.

His website and blog can be visited at http://www.philipgraham.net/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars strange but touching, June 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Interior Design: Stories (Hardcover)

in this disturbing novel philip graham covers many aspects of people. there are eight stories: another planet, angel, interior design, beauty marks, the pose, the reverse, geology, and lucky "another planet" is about a family trying to cope with their father's failing shoe buisness "angel" is about an orphaned boy and his obsession with his angel with whom he attempts to describe his entire life to "interior design" is about an extremely creative woman who becomes increasingly fed up with her none-to creative lover and her attempt at getting him to express his feelings "beauty marks" tells about the secrets of a village a young american couple goes to live in to experience the native's life. they discover a secret that is known only by the villagers. this story is my favorite "the pose" is about a woman and man seperatly trying to recreate a pose the women was in in a picture taken when they had a better relationship "the reverse" is about an aspiring actress who gets hired for a commercial where she plays a character that is exactly the opposite of her "geology" is a tragic story of a woman who falls deeply in love with a man, but later discovers she was really in love with the ideas his job in geology presented to her "lucky" is about a man that sells old-fashioned clothes to his customers, who are all dying this book is very tragic and disturbing, but presents views on life that you probably never thought of!