Lithuania: Short Stories (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction) (Paperback)

by Joe Ashby Porter (Author) "Ten years ago (already! it hardly seems possible) my French friend Yves and I took the Twenty-four-hour boat trip from Marseille to Tunis..." (more)
Key Phrases: camp office, upper town, lower town, Zia Lucia, Van Frank, Tonton Jules (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In stories set in such diverse places as Tunisia, Quebec and Baltimore, Porter ( The Kentucky Stories ) conjures up quirky, gritty characters and surrounds them with evocative swatches of local color. The stories meander along, with no startling plot developments but with a delightfully wry realism. In "Basse Ville," a crusty old Canadian coot who fancies himself a painter searches for Sinbad, his missing parrot, and reflects on life, death and his wife ("What the hell, wonders of the universe probably only matter to you if you're about to kick off, so maybe it's all to the good for your wife not to bat an eye at them"). "West Baltimore" is the story of fat, semi-toothless Margaret, with her childhood memories, her present-day gossip and her fears that she will be evicted from her apartment as the neighborhood gentrifies. The only weak link in this excellent collection is "Attention, Shoppers," an overly arch riff on consumerism in the far future. But even this piece has its droll moments ("When I first slid my toots into those beauts Big Bird shoes and slid across the permaseal I felt more serene than Goethe ice-skating in the old picture").
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
The author of "Eelgrass" and "The Kentucky Stories" now offers a collection of "mysterious and beautiful" (Lee Smith) stories, "as subtle, syntactically graceful, and beautiful as any I've seen" (Toby Olson).

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (October 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801840929
• ISBN-13: 978-0801840920
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,519,048 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting short stories having nothing to do with Lithuani, December 21, 1997

By A Customer

I ordered this book thinking its short stories would be about Lithuania by a visitor, perhaps. Instead, the stories, while quite well written, are about the author's experiences in Baltimore, where some Lithuanians happen to cross paths, peripherally, with the author, and about his interactions with Arabs, here and in Africa -- which stories have a decided (I think) homosexual bent. Readers hoping for a travelogue about Lithuania are sure to be disappointed, if not annoyed, and might well ask for a refund.