Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories

Groff, Lauren

ISBN 10 : 1400160707 ISBN 13 : 9781400160709

Editeur : Tantor Media Inc, 2009

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

From Lauren Groff, author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling novel Fates and Furies, comes Delicate Edible Birds, one of the most striking short fiction debuts in years. Here are nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a twentieth-century American woman.

In "Sir Fleeting," a Midwestern farm girl on her honeymoon in Argentina falls into lifelong lust for a French playboy. In "Blythe," an attorney who has become a stay-at-home mother takes a night class in poetry and meets another full-time mother, one whose charismatic brilliance changes everything. In "The Wife of the Dictator," that eponymous wife ("brought back . . . from [the dictator's] last visit to America") grows more desperately, menacingly isolated every day. In "Delicate Edible Birds," a group of war correspondents-a lone, high-spirited woman among them-falls sudden prey to a brutal farmer while fleeing Nazis in the French countryside. In "Lucky Chow Fun," Groff returns us to Templeton, the setting of her first book, for revelations about the darkness within even that idyllic small town.

In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime--or several lifetimes.

Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations. Crime is a motif--sex crimes, a possible murder, crimes of the heart. Love troubles recur; they're in every story--love in alcoholism, in adultery, in a flood, even in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Some of the love has depths, which are understood too late; some of the love is shallow, and also understood too late. And mastery is a theme--Groff's women swim and baton twirl, become poets, or try and try again to achieve the inner strength to exercise personal freedom.

Overall, these stories announce a notable new literary master. Dazzlingly original and confident, Delicate Edible Birds further solidifies Groff's reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Lauren Groff's critically acclaimed The Monsters of Templeton was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers 2008, and critics hailed her as an enormous talent and a writer to watch. In Delicate Edible Birds, she fulfils that promise.

Delicate Edible Birds includes nine stories of vastly different styles and structures. 'L. De Bard and Aliette' recreates the tale of Abelard and Heloise in New York during the 1918 flu epidemic; 'Lucky Chow Fun' returns to Templeton, the setting of Groff's debut novel, for a contemporary account of what happens to outsiders in a small, insular town; the title story of Delicate Edible Birds is a harrowing, powerfully moving drama about a group of war correspondents, a lone woman among them, who fall prey to a frightening man in the French countryside while fleeing the Nazis.

With a dazzling array of voices and settings, Delicate Edible Birds will cement Lauren Groff's reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Tantor Media Inc
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1400160707
• ISBN 13: 9781400160709
• Reliure: MP3 CD