Livability: Stories [Paperback]

Jon Raymond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2008

A collection of rich, powerfully human stories from the author of The Half-Life and the movies Old Joy (“one of the finest American films of the year”—New York Times) and Wendy and Lucy.

A grieving man embarks on a long-imagined affair in the months following his wife’s unexpected death. Two old friends attempt to rediscover their lost bond on a trip to remote mountain hot springs. Two teenagers, trapped in a mall after hours, push each other to new levels of honesty and sexual misconduct.

In Jon Raymond’s deft, nuanced stories, these and other characters experience the deep longings and sudden insights of life in a modern, middle-sized city—a world of rapidly changing neighborhoods, rising financial pressures, and chance encounters shaped by far-distant forces. Whether kids or carpenters, artists or drifters, all have arrived at a crossroads, seeking what they need to survive and finding what, if necessary, they are willing to live without. With poetic detail and a humane spirit, Livability draws a somber, wryly observed portrait of America now.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. These nine gorgeous stories from novelist and screenwriter Raymond find pallid Northwesterners testing the moral perimeters of their decent lives. In The Suckling Pig, set around the preparations for a dinner party, the divorced middle-aged host hires two Mexican men for some yard work at his suburban house, then adds them to the guest list to spur on what turns out to be a transformative and class-blurring evening. The wayward protagonist of Train Choir hopes to make it to Alaska and find work with the fisheries, but she gets caught stealing food for her dog, setting off a chain of mishaps that sinks her deeper into a perverse, solitary rut. In Young Bodies, 17-year-old Russian émigré Kendra sneaks into the store where she works to return the money she'd stolen, only to get locked in the mall for the night with an increasingly unsympathetic co-worker. A sense of fragility pervades these characters' lives, and as the upsets that threaten each of them simmer, Raymond reveals how close failure (and worse) lingers. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

This enticing collection pulses with the intensity of its diverse characters and the affliction that comes part and parcel with decisions, large or small, that they make at life’s junctures. The haunting “Benny” finds a reluctant man returning to his old neighborhood to search for a lost childhood friend, the titular character, as a favor to Benny’s dying father. With “Young Bodies,” two teenagers, Kendra, a Russian emigrant, and Bryan, are locked in a mall overnight after Kendra’s plan to return stolen money goes awry. As the night progresses and inhibitions dissolve, Kendra finds herself slowly, then eagerly testing the limits of her burgeoning sexuality, to uneasy affect. “Train Choir” follows the nomadic Verna, who is traveling to Alaska in hope of finding work at a fishing cannery. Verna’s rash decision to steal food for her dog during a layover in a small Oregon town is her first misstep in a line of many, and her situation increasingly worsens alongside her emotional desperation. Devoid of extraneous narrative, Raymond’s nine stories are delicately refined and sublimely electric. --Leah Strauss

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Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (December 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596916559
• ISBN-13: 978-1596916555
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #768,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He deserves the accolades, January 7, 2009

By 

Shogun (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Livability: Stories (Paperback)

I make my living as a screenwriter. And, honestly, this book made me think I have a tremendous trek ahead of me to get to this level. The stories (save perhaps one) are astonishing. The Suckling Pig in particular punched the wind right out of me. There are no enormous events - as the critics note, it's the slipping of shadows across the room, the subtleties - but they are clinging with me in a way I can say no fiction has in some time. Highly recommended reading.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chasing the sound of the train whistle echoing through the wilderness, March 26, 2009

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Lost in Siberia (a small island in the Arctic Ocean) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Livability: Stories (Paperback)

Jonathan Raban wrote an excellent review for this book and for the film "Wendy and Lucy" -- which is based on one of the book's stories, "Train Choir" -- for the New York Review of Books, March 26, 2009 issue. The review is available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22470. Here is a brief excerpt:

" . . . Raymond is a prose maximalist. Although his characters have difficulty relating to each other, they relate to the reader with unbuttoned, occasionally garrulous, intimacy. To the reader alone, they entrust their memories, thoughts, feelings, landscape descriptions, even as they explain to the reader why these private riches can't be shared with the person closest to them in the story. At the end of 'Benny,' the narrator considers talking about his dead friend to his Vietnamese wife, Minh:

"'I heard her walking around in the kitchen and I knew she'd be happy enough if I came up and told her what was on my mind. I stayed put though. I had plenty of stories about Benny I could share, but I didn't really see the point. Why bother?... It was too late for Minh to understand what Benny had meant to me. It was too late for her to understand that we might as well have been brothers.'

"The cumulative effect of this, extended over nine stories, is to immerse the reader in a varied society of compulsive and fluent interior monologuists, who experience their lives with articulate intensity, but find it uphill work to communicate satisfactorily with their fellow loners."

A podcast of Raban is also available at nybooks.com. Based on his review, I'm ordering the book, and look forward to seeing the film ...

5.0 out of 5 stars Transition points in life, April 23, 2010

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Indian Prairie Public Library "ippl.info" (Darien, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Livability: Stories (Paperback)

This short story collection is set in and around Portland, Oregon, and follows characters at transition points in life. Two of the nine stories have been adapted into independent feature films directed by Kelly Reichardt.