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The first book-length critical approach to the fiction of the award-winning author of Birds of America Understanding Lorrie Moore is a comprehensive companion to the works of this wickedly humorous writer, whose fiction shows a deep sensitivity to the dynamics of contemporary gender relations and an abiding interest in portraying and critiquing the American national character. The recipient of the 1998 O. Henry Award and the 2004 Rea Award for the Short Story, Lorrie Moore is best known for her short fiction. Alison Kelly shows that Moore's virtuosic prose, wry humor, and sense of irony are tools for registering how Americans face the discomfort of their daily lives as individuals and as a n...
Award-winning author Lorrie Moore has been writing criticism for over thirty years - and her forensically intelligent, witty and engaging essays are collected here for the first time. Whether writing on Titanic, Margaret Atwood or The Wire, her pieces always offer surprising insights into contemporary culture.'Exhilarating . . . I was struck not only by Moore's intelligence and wit, and by the syntactical and verbal satisfactions of her prose, but by the fundamental generosity of her critical spirit.' Guardian'One of America's most brilliant writers . . . This book is a delight.' Stylist'Intimate and approachable . . . See What Can Be Done flooded my veins with pleasure.' New York Times'An incisive, wide-ranging and enjoyable collection . . . Marvellously nuanced.' Observer'Impressive . . . so witty and well-mannered . . . Has something wise or funny on almost every page.' Financial Times'The entire book is filled with the sharp, off-the-wall, completely brilliant observations that Moore is famous for.' The Pool
A revelatory tale of love gained and lost—from a master of contemporary American fiction. • "An extraordinary, often hilarious novel." —The New York Times Book Review Gerard sits, fully clothed, in his empty bathtub and pines for Benna. Neighbors in the same apartment building, they share a wall and Gerard listens for the sound of her toilet flushing. Gerard loves Benna. And then Benna loves Gerard. She listens to him play piano, she teaches poetry and sings at nightclubs. As their relationships ebbs and flows, through reality and imagination, Lorrie Moore paints a captivating, innovative portrait of men and women in love and not in love.
Shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award In these eight masterful stories, Lorrie Moore explores the passing of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and comic pitfalls. Gimlet-eyed social observation, the public and private absurdities of American life, irony and half-cracked love wend their way through these stories, in which Moore is always tender, never sentimental and often heartbreakingly funny.
Since the publication of Self-Help, her first collection of stories, Lorrie Moore has been hailed as one of the greatest and most influential voices in American fiction. Her ferociously funny, soulful stories tell of the gulf between men and women, the loneliness of the broken-hearted and the yearned-for, impossible intimacies we crave. Gathered here for the first time in a beautiful hardback edition is the complete stories along with three new and previously unpublished in book form: Paper Losses, The Juniper Tree, Debarking.
From the national bestselling author of A Gate at the Stairs—and a master of contemporary American fiction—comes “a funny, cohesive, and moving collection of stories" (The New York Times Book Review). In these tales of loss and pleasure, lovers and family, a woman learns to conduct an affair, a child of divorce dances with her mother, and a woman with a terminal illness contemplates her exit. Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the bestselling author of A Gate at the Stairs: A collection of twelve stories that’s “one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability" (The New York Times Book Review). A volume by one of the most exciting writers at work today, the acclaimed author of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Self-Help. Stories remarkable in their range, emotional force, and dark laughter, and in the sheer beauty and power of their language. From the opening story, "Willing"—about a second-rate movie actress in her thirties who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes inv...
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this moving, poignant novel by the bestselling author of Birds of America—and a master of American fiction—we share a grown woman’s bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth. "An enchanting novel." —The New York Times The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger—until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help—and then everything changes.
'When apple-picking season ended, I got a Job in a packing plant and gravitated towards short stories, which I could read during my break and reflect upon for the remainder of my shift. A good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit . . . Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping a burglar might come upon it and mistake her words for my own. That an intruder would spend his valuable time reading, that he might be impressed by the description of a crooked face, was something I did not question, as I believed, and still do, that stories can save you'.
Taken from award-winning writer Lorrie Moore's debut short story collection Self-Help (1985), How To Become a Writer is a wryly witty deconstruction of tips for aspiring writers, told in vignettes by a self-absorbed narrator who fails to observe the wrold around her. A modern classic, this story has been pulled out to accompany the launch of the Faber Modern Classics list.