Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge

Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge PDF Author: Peter Orner
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316224634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book Here

Book Description
Peter Orner zeroes in on the strange ways our memories define us: A woman's husband dies before their divorce is finalized; a man runs for governor of Illinois and loses much more than an election; two brothers play beneath the infamous bridge at Chappaquiddick. Employing the masterful compression for which he has been widely praised, Orner presents a kaleidoscope of individual lives viewed in startling, intimate close-up. Whether writing of Geraldo Rivera's attempt to reveal the contents of Al Capone's vault or of a father and daughter trying to outrun a hurricane, Orner illuminates universal themes. In stories that span considerable geographic ground -- from Chicago to Wyoming, from Massachusetts to the Czech Republic -- he writes of the past we can't seem to shake, the losses we can't make up for, and the power of our stories to help us reclaim what we thought was gone forever. "A ravishing collection, full of wisdom, grief, beauty, and especially surprise." -- Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collectors

Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge

Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge PDF Author: Peter Orner
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316224634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book Here

Book Description
Peter Orner zeroes in on the strange ways our memories define us: A woman's husband dies before their divorce is finalized; a man runs for governor of Illinois and loses much more than an election; two brothers play beneath the infamous bridge at Chappaquiddick. Employing the masterful compression for which he has been widely praised, Orner presents a kaleidoscope of individual lives viewed in startling, intimate close-up. Whether writing of Geraldo Rivera's attempt to reveal the contents of Al Capone's vault or of a father and daughter trying to outrun a hurricane, Orner illuminates universal themes. In stories that span considerable geographic ground -- from Chicago to Wyoming, from Massachusetts to the Czech Republic -- he writes of the past we can't seem to shake, the losses we can't make up for, and the power of our stories to help us reclaim what we thought was gone forever. "A ravishing collection, full of wisdom, grief, beauty, and especially surprise." -- Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collectors

Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge

Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge PDF Author: Peter Orner
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0316224634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book Here

Book Description
Peter Orner zeroes in on the strange ways our memories define us: A woman's husband dies before their divorce is finalized; a man runs for governor of Illinois and loses much more than an election; two brothers play beneath the infamous bridge at Chappaquiddick. Employing the masterful compression for which he has been widely praised, Orner presents a kaleidoscope of individual lives viewed in startling, intimate close-up. Whether writing of Geraldo Rivera's attempt to reveal the contents of Al Capone's vault or of a father and daughter trying to outrun a hurricane, Orner illuminates universal themes. In stories that span considerable geographic ground -- from Chicago to Wyoming, from Massachusetts to the Czech Republic -- he writes of the past we can't seem to shake, the losses we can't make up for, and the power of our stories to help us reclaim what we thought was gone forever. "A ravishing collection, full of wisdom, grief, beauty, and especially surprise." -- Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collectors

Am I Alone Here?

Am I Alone Here? PDF Author: Peter Orner
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1936787253
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
This National Book Critics Circle Award is “an entrancing attempt to catch what falls between: the irreducibly personal, messy, even embarrassing ways reading and living bleed into each other, which neither literary criticism nor autobiography ever quite acknowledges" (The New York Times). “Stories, both my own and those I’ve taken to heart, make up whoever it is that I’ve become,” Peter Orner writes in this collection of essays about reading, writing, and living. Orner reads and writes everywhere he finds himself: a hospital cafeteria, a coffee shop in Albania, or a crowded bus in Haiti. The result is a book of unlearned meditations that stumbles into memoir. Among the many writers Orner addresses are Isaac Babel and Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom told their truths and were silenced; Franz Kafka, who professed loneliness but craved connection; Robert Walser, who spent the last twenty-three years of his life in a Swiss insane asylum, working at being crazy; and Juan Rulfo, who practiced the difficult art of silence. Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Yasunari Kawabata, Saul Bellow, Mavis Gallant, John Edgar Wideman, William Trevor, and Václav Havel make appearances, as well as the poet Herbert Morris--about whom almost nothing is known. An elegy for an eccentric late father, and the end of a marriage, Am I Alone Here? is also a celebration of the possibility of renewal. At once personal and panoramic, this book will inspire readers to return to the essential stories of their own lives.

Maggie Brown & Others

Maggie Brown & Others PDF Author: Peter Orner
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316516139
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this powerful and virtuosic collection of interlocking stories, each one "a marvel of concision and compassion" (Washington Post), a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and "master of his form" (/~i~New York Times) takes the short story to new heights. Through forty-four compressed gems, Peter Orner, a writer who "doesn't simply bring his characters to life, he gives them souls" (NYT Book Review), chronicles people whose lives are at inflection points, gripping us with a series of defining moments. Whether it's a first date that turns into a late-night road trip to a séance in an abandoned airplane hangar, or a family's memories of the painful mystery surrounding a neglected uncle's demise, Orner reveals how our fleeting decisions between kindness and abandonment chase us across time. These stories are anchored by a poignant novella that delivers not only the joys and travails of a forty-year marriage, but an entire era in a working-class New England city. Bristling with the crackling energy of life itself, Maggie Brown & Others marks the most sustained achievement to date for "a master of his form" (New York Times). A New York Times Notable Book A Chicago Tribune Notable Book An Oprah Magazine Best Book of 2019 Kirkus Reviews Best Short Fiction of 2019 Longlisted for the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize

Can't and Won't

Can't and Won't PDF Author: Lydia Davis
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374711437
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description
A new collection of short stories from the woman Rick Moody has called "the best prose stylist in America" Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of "Bloomington" reads, "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert's correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author's own dreams, or the dreams of friends. What does not vary throughout Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis's fifth collection of stories, is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.

That Old Cape Magic

That Old Cape Magic PDF Author: Richard Russo
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030727330X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls delivers his most intimate novel yet: "An astute portrait of a 30-year marriage, in all its promise and pain…. His honest, heartfelt storytelling—like a cooling breeze off a certain New England shoreline—has never felt fresher" (People). For Griffin, all paths, all memories, converge at Cape Cod. The Cape is where he took his childhood summer vacations, where he and his wife, Joy, honeymooned, where they decided he’d leave his LA screenwriting job to become a college professor, and where they celebrated the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. But when their beloved Laura’s wedding takes place a year later, Griffin is caught between chauffeuring his mother’s and father’s ashes in two urns and contending with Joy and her large, unruly family. Both he and she have also brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened? By turns hilarious, rueful, and uplifting, That Old Cape Magic is a profoundly involving novel about marriage, family, and all the other ties that bind. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Painted Cities

Painted Cities PDF Author: Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski
Publisher: McSweeney's
ISBN: 1940450381
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 117

Get Book Here

Book Description
To those outside it, Pilsen is a vast barrio on the south side of Chicago. To Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, it is a world of violence and decay and beauty, of nuance and pure chance. It is a place where the smell of cooking frijoles is washed away by that of dead fish in the river, where vendettas are a daily routine, and where a fourteen-year-old immigrant might hold the ability bring people back from the dead. Simultaneously tough and tender, these stories mark the debut of a writer poised to represent his city's literature for decades to come.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground PDF Author: Alicia Elliott
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 161219866X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In her raw, unflinching memoir . . . she tells the impassioned, wrenching story of the mental health crisis within her own family and community . . . A searing cry." —New York Times Book Review The Mohawk phrase for depression can be roughly translated to "a mind spread out on the ground." In this urgent and visceral work, Alicia Elliott explores how apt a description that is for the ongoing effects of personal, intergenerational, and colonial traumas she and so many Native people have experienced. Elliott's deeply personal writing details a life spent between Indigenous and white communities, a divide reflected in her own family, and engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, art, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, and representation. Throughout, she makes thrilling connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political. A national bestseller in Canada, this updated and expanded American edition helps us better understand legacy, oppression, and racism throughout North America, and offers us a profound new way to decolonize our minds.

The Kingdoms

The Kingdoms PDF Author: Natasha Pulley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635576091
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Get Book Here

Book Description
For fans of The 7 1⁄2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and David Mitchell, a genre bending, time twisting alternative history that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved. Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English-instead of French-the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. Swept out to sea with a hardened British sea captain named Kite, who might know more about Joe's past than he's willing to let on, Joe will remake history, and himself. From bestselling author Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms is an epic, romantic, wildly original novel that bends genre as easily as it twists time.

Love and Shame and Love

Love and Shame and Love PDF Author: Peter Orner
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 031619154X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book Here

Book Description
Alexander Popper can't stop remembering. Four years old when his father tossed him into Lake Michigan, he was told, Sink or swim, kid. In his mind, he's still bobbing in that frigid water. The rest of this novel's vivid cast of characters also struggle to remain afloat: Popper's mother, stymied by an unhappy marriage, seeks solace in the relentless energy of Chicago; his brother, Leo, shadow boss of the family, retreats into books; paternal grandparents, Seymour and Bernice, once high fliers, now mourn for long lost days; his father, a lawyer and would-be politician obsessed with his own success, fails to see that the family is falling apart; and his college girlfriend, the fiercely independent Kat, wrestles with impossible choices. Covering four generations of the Popper family, Peter Orner illuminates the countless ways that love both makes us whole and completely unravels us. A comic and sorrowful tapestry of memory of connection and disconnection, Love and Shame and Love explores the universals with stunning originality and wisdom.