From Publishers Weekly
Family obligations often bring together people who have no reason to associate other than a shared past. Such is the "tug of the unavoidable" that the protagonist, Dutton, feels in returning home for his disliked father's surgery in "Bypass," one of the 11 finely turned stories in Turchi's ( The Girl Next Store ) second collection. Like many characters in these affecting tales, Dutton is unable to fix things. When his father tries to reconcile, Dutton balks, picturing "a wildly sentimental scene from the worst movies." Likewise, in "Everything I Need," a young man obsessed with talk radio cares for his grandmother, who "needs" only her dog and her TV. The two, he says, "were like two sides of a broken zipper." In "Layover," a man paralyzed with disappointment in his unfaithful wife and his scornful daughter, finds he cannot leave his hotel room. Other stories show people moving to another of life's stages. In "False Spring," Turchi chronicles the gradual decline and isolation of an amiable old man, closing with a beautiful description of the man's silent passing. In Turchi's skillful handling, these quiet, ordinary lives, are memorable.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Peter Turchi's his stories have appeared in Story, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Colorado Review, and Puerto del Sol, among other magazines. He co-edited, with Charles Baxter, Bringing The Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life. He directs and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
