Heart Failure (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

Heart Failure (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
Star Game (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
Eminent Domain (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
Resurrectionists (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
Old Wives’ Tales (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
Язык: Английский

Fifteen stories deal with divorce, family life, death, wealth, suicide, alienation, communication, and indifference. These 15 stories meet existence head on through detached narration that has the quality of a feverish dream. The chilling psyche tells a story where there seems to be no story. Even the victim remains dispassionate and lets the reader infer causes and measure threats. In unvarnished, linear prose stripped of sentimentality, Goodman casts the shape of inarticulate emotion. Yet at the heart of her stories about the foolish, the indifferent, and the vicious, between painful connections and violations, there is regenerating laughter or an inexpressible trace of something once whole and beautiful. Beneath Goodman’s every absence, there is a compelling, disturbing presence.

Star Game (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

A fine birght copy that looks new in spite of being almost ten years old. In these authentic and descriptive tales, Lucia Nevai quietly portrays the lives of a cross section of our times: a reconstituted stepfamily struggling to put down new roots, self-destructive women caught in unfulfilling relationships with men, rural dwellers evoking the basic desires and pains of their unchanging but nevertheless eventful lives.
In these authentic and descriptive tales, Lucia Nevai quietly portrays the lives of a cross section of our times: a reconstituted stepfamily struggling to put down new roots, self-destructive women caught in unfulfilling relationships with men, rural dwellers evoking the basic desires and pains of their unchanging but nevertheless eventful lives.

Eminent Domain (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

Eminent Domain bears the hallmark of a mature and talented author. While subtle metaphors and analogies resonate throughout the text, the surface of these stories is charged with vivid scenes of fishing, caring for game birds in winter, branding calves in Nebraska, and rescuing a wounded mountain climber.
With both humor and poignancy, Dan O’Brien explores the lives of his diverse characters. In ‘The Inheritance,’ a businessman goes fishing after the death of his father and realizes, through memories he tries to evade, the richness of the inheritance his father has left him. ‘Eminent Domain’ tells the story of Willy Herbeck, who’s ‘dirty, sloppy, unsociable, old-fashioned, moody, bullheaded, and ugly.’ But he’s also ‘got class’ and is willing to go to extremes to keep from selling his junkyard to the government.
At ease with a wide variety of characters and complex emotional circumstances, O’Brien enriches his stories with authentic voices and thought-provoking resolutions. These are stories you will return to again and again.

Resurrectionists (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

Eight stories deal with a teenager practicing martial arts, a photojournalist’s encounter with zombiism, a paper mill worker, and a hospital patient on New Year’s Day.
“The stories in this accomplished collection range in setting from the West Indies to the Pacific Northwest, presenting characters that include a photojournalist in Haiti introduced to the islanders’ belief in zombiism, an ex-policeman working in a paper mill, a hospital patient on New Year’s Day, and a teenager practicing martial arts. Their stories are at times grotesque and desperate but always engrossing.
What sets these stories apart from other contemporary fiction is their skilled and evocative sense of place-Working creates atmospheres that almost become separate characters with their own critical significance and influence. Convincing in his portrayal of a harsh, often violent side of life, Working jars us and demands attention.

Old Wives’ Tales (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

Ten stories tell of an elderly South American woman, a teenage suicide, a divorced couple, and two lovers listening to sounds from a neighbor’s apartment.
In these ten varied and keenly rendered tales, Susan Dodd explores the levels of the human heart by leading us through a gallery of feelings, insights, characters, and emotions. Whether writing about a 100-year-old woman in South America, a teenage suicide in Winnetka, a divorced couple meeting by chance, or a pair of lovers listening to the family on the other side of their apartment wall, Dodd places us in a world full of subdued conflict where bonds between loved ones and strangers are tested, broken, and sometimes renewed. Her themes range beyond the regional or contemporary, embracing those moments of loneliness and self-knowledge that confront us all. As the characters meet and separate, wonder and react, we travel with them, exploring the forms of our existence, and the substance of our hearts.