The Last Time I Saw You [Paperback]

Rebecca Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2006

In The Last Time I Saw You, author Rebecca Brown returns to the obsessive, darkly humorous voice that has earned her comparisons to Samuel Beckett and Djuna Barnes. Some of the tales in this collection are told in the scrappy, breathless voice of a naïf on the verge of a terrible revelation. Others are noir-baroque monologues that collapse in on themselves as a speaker at last abandons a much-needed delusion. Intense, artfully crafted, and oddly comic, the stories in this collection are bound to stay with you like an insistent, disturbing dream.

Rebecca Brown is the winner of the 2003 Washington State Book Award. Her books include The Gifts of the Body, Excerpts From a Family Medical Dictionary, The Terrible Girls, and The End of Youth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brown's imaginative, fierce collection of 12 stories (her 10th book, after The End of Youth) evokes the painful detritus of lesbian love affairs long over and the trickiness of memory. Heartbreak and guilt fragment narrative and remembrance in the title story. A nameless woman unravels her tale as she tells it: "We had coffee... Wait—I would have had coffee... you were drinking mineral water... or maybe fresh squeezed orange juice"). In the cryptic two-page vignette "A Ventriloquist," a woman attributes the "hideous, terrible things" she says to a cruel, controlling higher power. "Your relationships take place in your head," an ex-lover told the self-lacerating narrator of "Trying to Say," which catalogues the things the narrator might have said to her girlfriend—but never did. In "The Others," another iteration of the tortured, rueful lover's lament, Brown depicts the emotional fallout of unfaithful girlfriends with gory, disturbing metaphors. In prose at once spare and unruly, Brown summons obsessive narrators hopelessly mired in an ever-shifting past. (Mar.)
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Review

"Every story is a stylistic and imaginative standout" -- Richard Labonte -- Book Marks, February 2006

"She is one of the few truly original modern lesbian writers." -- Joy Parks -- The San Francisco Chronicle, January 22nd, 2006

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Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (January 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864472
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864474
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,260,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, November 5, 2007

By 

tree turtle - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Time I Saw You (Paperback)

This collection of stories is just so wonderful--dark, witty, innovative in its treatment of love...I don't know what it the world the other reviewer was thinking!

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Yuck, yuck, yuck!, July 19, 2007

By 

twilight58 "twilight58" (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Time I Saw You (Paperback)

I could only force myself to read the first two stories. There may be hidden gems here, but I'll never know. I like creepy. I like strange. These stories were just ugly, nasty, and stomach-turning. It felt like I was reading the mad ravings of a lunatic. Not in a clever way--just seriously disturbed.