In a way, Disturbing the Peace bears a special relation to Yates's early t.b. ward stories — "Out With The Old," "No Pain Whatsoever," and "Thieves" (published here for the first time) — I guess to the extent the "affliction" of the protagonist can only be questioned in impersonally moral terms: the unafflicted are merely…
Farewell, My Lovelies Poems by Diann Blakely. Story Line Press, $12.95 paper. Reviewed by Denise Duhamel. In her second book, Farewell, My Lovelies, Diann Blakely evokes Raymond Chandler’s yin and writes a decidedly female poetry — tough, stylized, and heart-smart. In the opening poem of the collection, “Last Dance,” the speaker observes a gaggle of…
George Garrett recommends Graveyard of the Atlantic, stories by Alyson Hagy: “Alyson Hagy’s third collection of stories and her best so far. Praised by Charles Baxter and Jill McCorkle, among others, these seven stories all concern life on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.” (Graywolf)
Robert Stone's highly-praised first novel, A Hall of Mirrors, told of a down-and-out alcoholic radio announcer named Rheinhardt, of his doomed affair with a touching slattern named Geraldine, and of his involvement with ultra right wing politics. Good as it was, there were major flaws with that first work. For one thing, the story, couched…
First, Body Stories by Melanie Rae Thon. Houghton Mifflin, $21.95 cloth. Reviewed by Christopher Tilghman. Melanie Rae Thon’s fierce, unyielding, and brilliant new stories are now collected in First, Body, and the effect of reading all of them together after seeing many of them when originally published is simply to encounter genius. These stories come…
"Easy writing's curst hard reading," says Sheridan the witty playwright, and one reads Anne Bernays' prose so effortlessly and with such speed that he is inclined to think it is his own accomplishment and not the author's. But the art is there, leading us on, deftly sorting the German Jews from the Russian Jews by…
George Garrett recommends Dogfight and Other Stories, a first collection by Michael Knight: “An outstanding collection of ten stories, various in form and content, which have already won this young and gifted writer several awards.” (Plume)
Chase Twichell recommends Flesh and Blood, a novel by Michael Cunningham: “A contemporary family saga with vivid, memorable characters that tells a heartbreaking story without a trace of sentimentality. The writing is fluent and poetic, unselfconscious, with passages of great beauty.” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Russell Banksrecommends Harbor Lights, a novel by Theodore Weesner: “Ted Weesner, over the years since his powerful first novel, The Car Thief, has come numerous times to the rescue of American realism in fiction, and he’s done it again with Harbor Lights, a tough-minded and compassionate portrait of a good man struggling against odds not…
Winter 1982 - Digital