Love Among the Greats [Paperback]

Edith Pearlman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2002

Edith Pearlman's characters in this collection of stories are children, old women, young men, rabbis, toy makers, lovers, invalids, immigrants, schmoozers, angels, and fools; all perfectly real and accessible, all drawn with a kind of comic quietude.

The title story begins: "At the dinner following Michael's wedding to Bellamy they did the chair thing. It was a Jewish wedding, after all--as Jewish as a wedding could be when the bride's mother was not Jewish and therefore the bride, strictly speaking, was not Jewish either; as Jewish as a wedding could be in a prairie college town where the one synagogue, struggling to keep solvent, rented itself out weekdays to Alcoholics Anonymous and a quilting group."

Winner of the first annual Spokane Prize for Fiction, Love Among the Greats is a magnificent world tour of characters, tones, and fictional structures, all of them brought to life with a stunning restraint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pearlman paints a poignant, evocative series of portraits in her second short story collection, bringing her wide-ranging curiosity and intelligence to bear on an assemblage of unusual characters. A toy executive is transferred to a Czech village in "Toyfolk," and befriends a couple of toy collectors whose relationship is not what it seems. Two older single women, an obituary writer and a seamstress, find their passing relationship transformed into a lasting friendship when they escape a fire together in "Fitting." Several interrelated stories chronicle the life of Michal, the only child of a Midwestern Jewish college professor and his lovely gentile wife. In the title story, Michal survives a brief failed marriage and finds love at last with black pediatrician Malachi in the stacks of the Harvard library. Pearlman's sophisticated, off-kilter take on matters of the heart also illuminates "Fidelity," the brief story of a love triangle commencing when the protagonists are in their 60s and ending 20 years later. Some of her stories are so underplayed that they fall flat, but Pearlman is a compassionate narrator who uses irony and subtle humor to expose the flaws and foibles of her characters. As was the case in Vaquita, her award-winning debut effort, she shows herself to be a writer of uncommon depth and wisdom, with a penchant for adding a folkish touch to her plots and lessons.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Most of the stories in this elegant collection disprove Tolstoy's maxim. The families in them are both happy and different. The stories have a simplicity and lack of action that are reminiscent of Joyce's Dubliners. A family puts together a jigsaw puzzle, a poker game is played, a stranger moves into an apartment building. The notable exceptions are the title story and the related two stories surrounding it, all about a woman named Michal. These stories have more action (divorce, remarriage, a stroke, and a baptism) but are less successful. By the end of the third story about Michal, her personality is still fuzzy; more time is spent on the "eggplant" color of her second husband's skin than on who either of the characters are. "Love Among the Greats" also contains an embarrassingly written sex scene. With the exception of these three stories, Pearlman's characters are interesting and real, the writing elegant and concise. This quiet collection is perfect for solitary reading and reflection. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Eastern Washington University Press (March 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0910055807
• ISBN-13: 978-0910055802
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #487,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edith Pearlman is the recipient of the 2011 PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of short fiction. She has published more than 250 works in national magazines, literary journals, and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. She is the author of four story collections: Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories, a finalist for the National Book Award; Vaquita, winner of the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature; Love Among the Greats, winner of the Spokane Fiction Award; and How to Fall, winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exotic and spare, a bull's eye to the heart., January 5, 2003

By 

Elizabeth Isaacson (Providence, RI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love Among the Greats (Paperback)

Edith Pearlman's writes of people and places, varied in geography, time and circumstance. She hits the emotional center every time with a simplicity and intelligence that surprises and touches. I love short stories and Edith's are right on. From Jerusalem to Boston, from university scholar to a waitress in Maine, these stories and their characters are eccentric or off beat and unexpected. A woman loses her gay Jewish husband and replaces him with an African American pediatrician, a heterosexual, yet still so different from her that her loneliness pierces the reader's heart. Read these stories for their intelligence and their warmth. ...

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Winner of the 2001 Spokane Prize for short fiction, April 13, 2004

By 

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

This review is from: Love Among the Greats (Paperback)

Winner of the 2001 Spokane Prize for short fiction, Love Among The Greats by Edith Perlman is an enthralling and enthusiastically recommended anthology featuring characters ranging from children, to the elderly, toy makers, lovers, invalids, schmoozers, angels, and others. The captivating and superbly crafted portrayals of human dilemmas and enduringly powerful bonds developed in each of these outstanding stories combine to fashion a common, compelling theme that will keep the reader thoroughly hooked from tale to tale.