Women I've Known: New and Selected Stories [Hardcover]

Greg Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 2007

Johnson's fiction is regional writing at its best, Southern fiction that focuses especially on Atlanta and the New South.

These twenty-four stories, seven new and the rest selected from Johnson's previous four collections, range from "The Metamorphosis," in which a young female impersonator is torn to pieces by her fans, to "Last Encounter with the Enemy," a battle of wills between Flannery O'Connor and a precocious eleven-year-old boy. Other women writers from the past encountered here are Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Emily Dickinson. Stories from the new collection have been included in The O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Greg Johnson is the author of eleven previous books: the novels Pagan Babies and Sticky Kisses, a collection of poetry, a biography of Joyce Carol Oates, three works of literary criticism, and the short-story collections Distant Friends, A Friendly Deceit, I Am Dangerous, and Last Encounter With the Enemy. He was named Georgia Author of the Year in 1991 and 1997. His fiction has garnered wide acclaim, from The New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Chicago Tribune to the Dallas Morning News, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. A professor of English at Kennesaw State University, he lives in Atlanta.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 366 pages
• Publisher: Ontario Review (April 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865381194
• ISBN-13: 978-0865381193
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,292,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greg Johnson is a writer's writer., October 22, 2007

By 

NaughtiLiterati (NYC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Women I've Known: New and Selected Stories (Hardcover)

I'm a bit surprised that this hasn't been reviewed yet, but I see that the author has other collections and some of those stories are in this new one, and I suppose I'M the one that's late to the party.

I came across this book the other day and have had a hard time putting it down since I started it (I know I say that a lot, but I guess it's because I have impeccable taste *chuckle*).

I started reading at 9 pm...finally put it down several hours later...and now I'm getting anxious because I only have ten stories left to read and I CAN'T stop. I haven't felt like this since my last coke binge; this is an exquisite story binge and I can't stop til every word has been hoovered, has hit the pleasure receptors in my brain and has left me breathless!!! LOL

But SERIOUSLY - each story is SO absorbing that you can actually read this book from cover to cover as if it were a novel, perhaps a lush and riveting, sometimes provocative and scary novel-in-stories about the inhabitants of Georgia. As a New Yorker, I'm not too familiar with the writers of the "New South", but I am so glad that I have this book. The writing is absolutely beautiful; when I say that he is a writer's writer it makes me think of the quote that a writer "strings words together like small children do with beads, happily absorbed in the process, putting one after another", and you can tell that while his work is subtle and RICH, his efforts were surely painstaking.

I am so smitten with this book. I also have the 2007 New Stories from the South edited by Edward P. Jones to see what else I'm missing once I'm done with this one, but I had to come on here and give the man his props cause he deserves them.

Buy and read at ONCE.