The accidental humor and the sometimes intentional malignance of American home life receive insightful treatment in a collection of superb short stories, throwing a revealing light on the hidden mysteries of life. By the author of Available Light.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Any season that produces fiction from the far-from-prolific Currie ( Available Light ) is a plus, and these 12 short stories are funny, sad and brimming with life. But Currie's trademark--the witty, wicked, corrosively bitter dialogue of her Irish-American characters--is sometimes overwhelming when encountered in rat-a-tat-tat order. Whether a professor of mathematics or a precociously clever child, her characters are desperate to be loved, but they are either themselves sharp-tongued, malicious and rancorous, or the victims of others with those nasty traits. Some take out their anguish in marital bickering; others inflict guilt on their children; women often vent their frustration in fierce bouts of heavy housework. Currie can conjure a picture like a camera: "She was a little, noisy, pretty girl; a sort of blue jay, heretical, put together by a reckless hand. He was peripheral--horribly tall, ferocious, and shy." She's almost without peer in reproducing the lilt and cadence of Irish speech overlaid by American vernacular. Three narratives stand out: "Tib's Eve," in which a teenager about to be expelled from boarding school hears surprising news from a janitor who knew her mother; the title story, in which a character finds catharsis in confronting the reality of her marriage; and "Exit Interview," in which an ad executive on the skids banters with a female assistant, disguising the terror lapping at his heart. If Currie's children are impossibly clever and her women often capricious and mean, her stories succeed in capturing the mutual destructiveness of human relationships and the small moments when understanding breaks through the stinging repartee and grants a glimmer of insight and peace.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This is a thoughtful collection of short stories about domestic dramas by the author of the novel Available Light (LJ 3/1/86). The title story is representative of the whole: a morose young man camps out in the closed-up beach house of his mother-in-law, trying hard to reconnect with his unhappy wife, who fled there when she learned she was pregnant. In "Tib's Eve," set in a boarding school, difficult, forlorn Catherine talks to the janitor who remembers her mother when she was a student there. Doe is a social worker in "The One Without the Parsley Is the One Without Poison," who collects the detritus of her clients' sad lives: abandoned pets and badly crocheted doilies. The stories are well presented, if often too sad. Overall, this is a very good collection.
Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
sharp, witty prose,
By A Customer
This review is from: Moses Supposes (Hardcover)
Ellen Currie's prose is tight and vivid. The stories are very funny. If you love language, and love to see it crafted well, this book is a treat.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
