The Prisoner Pear: Stories from the Lake [Hardcover]

Elissa Minor Rust (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0804010838 | ISBN-13: 978-0804010832 | Publication Date: December 12, 2005

These stories take place in an upscale suburb of Portland, Oregon, and explore what the American dream means to twenty-first-century suburbanites. In a city where the homecoming queen still makes the front page of the weekly newspaper, ducks caught in storm drains and stolen campaign signs make up the bulk of the crime reports in the paper's police blotter. Underneath, though, are complexities that rival those of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Each of the stories begins with an entry from the newspaper's police blotter. Elissa Minor Rust fills in the background to these small, odd events-a headless parakeet found in mailbox, a nude jogger, an alarmingly deathlike discarded teddy bear. Her stories, both humorous and disturbing, dive beneath the clear, hard surface of a community into the murky complexities that swirl beneath. The lake at the center of town is a constant in the lives of this town's people, and it appears and reappears throughout the book as a symbol of wealth and power, of love and loss. The Prisoner Pear offers a rare look inside the heart of middle- and upper-class suburbia. Reading these stories is, as one character observes, “ . . .like seeing the town from the inside out, as if the lake was its heart and the rest merely its bones and skin.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 12 efficient, accomplished stories inspired by snippets from the Lake Oswego, Ore., police blotter, Rust takes a magnifying glass to affluent suburban life in the Pacific Northwest. In the title story, a young UPS manager looks for signs that he should propose to his rich girlfriend while battling a case of cold feet and class anxiety. A blotter item about two high school girls thought to be prostitutes (in fact, they're just standing on a corner, waiting for a cab) blossoms into a perceptive and moving story about best friends united—and ultimately divided—by their severe eating disorders. Economics drive a young father to enroll himself in risky medical experiments in "Rich Girls"; in "Of All the Insatiable Human Urges," a 36-year-old woman discovers she's pregnant shortly after learning that her 49-year-old husband is dying of prostate cancer; and in "Moon over Water," an unnatural sequence of full moons wreaks havoc in the Portland area. Solid, believable characters rendered in careful, deliberate prose move against a convincing landscape of lakeside cottages and sprawling McMansions, grocery store aisles and shopping malls, bedrooms and doctors' offices. This is a fine portrait of privileged lives, in all their mundanity and weirdness. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist

Imagination takes flight in these 12 stories set in Lake Oswego, an affluent suburb of Portland, Oregon. Rust begins each story with a snippet from the local newspaper's police blotter, from which spins a tale--sometimes edging on the surreal. A report of food thrown at a garage door spawns "Vital Organs," in which a woman's kidneys simply disappear, affecting her only with profound sadness; media attention disturbs her neighbors, and canned kidney beans are thrown at her garage door before she finds that her body emptied for a reason. In "Rich Girls," a report of a fire started in the high-school boys' bathroom is embedded in the tale of a man who takes part in increasingly intrusive medical research studies to get extra money for his wife and daughters. A report of a vicious cat near a resident's back porch starts "Moon over Water," in which the full moon becomes frozen over Portland (and nowhere else), leading to fertile animals, fast-growing plants, and obese people. Rust's prose is crisp and precise. Michele Leber
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Swallow Press (December 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804010838
• ISBN-13: 978-0804010832
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,148,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even If You Don't Usually Read Short Stories, January 3, 2006

By 

Janet Sahni (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Prisoner Pear: Stories from the Lake (Hardcover)

I don't read a lot of short stories, but this book grabbed me from the first page. Each story takes place in the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego and is prefaced with an entry from the local police blotter. The stories span a wide variety of relationships and conditions, but the glue that holds it all together is Elissa Rust's excellent writing. Her use of detail transports you to the scene without ever weighing down the prose. This book is a delight to the senses. In particular, I enjoyed Iris and Megan Imagine Alternatives which is about two teenage girls who meet in an eating disorder clinic and Moon Over Water which is equal parts beautiful and haunting.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars imaginative and insightful, April 14, 2006

By 

G. Wiggman - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prisoner Pear: Stories from the Lake (Hardcover)

Elissa has crafted an imaginative and insightful book. She's a gifted writer. I loved the characters in The Prisoner Pear and thought the short story format was terrific. You can just pick up the book and have a satisfying read in minutes. The police blotter is a terrific thread to hold the stories together. I look forward to her next work.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an atmosphere of quiet dread, February 21, 2006

By 

grrlpup (Portland, Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prisoner Pear: Stories from the Lake (Hardcover)

Although the epigraph for each story is an item from the local police blotter, the stories in this book are moody, evocative, and based more in relationships than action. Some have a touch of magical realism. They remind me of stories by Peter Cameron, or Lorrie Moore without the hilarity. Most of the narrators seem to be observing, from a distance and without total comprehension, even when it's their own lives they're observing. I enjoyed the delicate balance and good writing, and the local color (I live in Portland), but there's no story in the book that I would rush out and make my friends read right away.