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"Put [Pearlman's] stories besides those of John Updike and Alice Munro. That's where they belong." —Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto
Spanning no fewer than four countries in sixty years, the sixteen buoyant, brilliantly constructed stories in this award-winning volume flesh out the myriad complexities of people who, at first glance, live unremarkable lives.
Widowers, old men, estranged spouses, young restaurant workers, career women and Jewish grandmothers are all at the center of Pearlman's cool, studied observations. Each character is rendered with such unpredictable intricacy that they often astonish themselves just as much as the reader. Many of the stories either begin or wind their way back to one, mythical, two-by-three-mile Massachusetts town—Godolphin, a place that "called itself a town but was really a leafy wedge of Boston."
"Her writing is intelligent, perceptive, funny and quite beautiful . . . Pearlman's view of the world is large and compassionate, delivered through small, beautifully precise moments." —Roxana Robinson, The New York Times Book Review
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 1, 2005 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781936747061
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781936747061
- File size: 386 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 17, 2005
In her third delicately eccentric collection of short stories, the underappreciated Pearlman (Vaquita
; Love Among the Greats
) pegs characters as diverse as a comedian's silent sidekick, a 17-year-old girl newly independent from her two mothers and a PBS anchor who bemoans after a makeover, "You're not attractive, you know—you only look attractive." More than half of the stories are set in Godolphin, a fictional Boston suburb where daily life is enacted in all its glorious monotony; several explore the mixed emotions roused by charity. In "The Large Lady," an uncomely representative of a fund-raising organization for starving kids manages to shake a gathering of suburban do-gooders from their complaisance, prompting one guest to reflect "Hell gapes for the merely empathic"; in "Rules," a dour mother and her home-schooled daughter rile the volunteers at a soup kitchen. Other stories revolve around twosomes: in "Home Schooling," twin sisters Willy and Harry share a non-traditional childhood; in "Signs of Life," Clara and Valerie have lived through the extraordinary and unimaginable, but consider themselves simply old and in love; in "Shenanigans" the elderly mothers of a dating couple meet and become friends: "They were each other's destiny, hinted the tall old Jewess. The tiny flower of Erin concurred." Pearlman's light touch and wry tone give the stories a pleasant buoyancy. Agent, Jill Kneerim at Kneerim & Williams.
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