|
|
|
|
||
|
HELP | |
|
  $13.25 List price:
Used Hardcover
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Music Through the Floorby Eric Puchner
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:With Music Through the Floor, Pushcart Prize winner and former Wallace Stegner Fellow Eric Puchner makes an extraordinary debut: a collection of nine unforgettable stories — strikingly original, fiercely funny, and quietly heartbreaking — portraying a group of cultural misfits attempting to navigate mainstream America. Lost, teetering on the edge of normalcy, Puchner's characters seek to define themselves in a frequently absurd and hostile world — a world that threatens to make outcasts of us all. Caught up in loneliness or solitude, they can't quite hear the music of their own lives. In "Children of God," a young loner becomes the caretaker and companion for two mentally retarded men, seeking solace in their outsider status. "Essay #3: Leda and the Swan" is told in the forlorn, be-nighted, and tragically funny voice of a high school girl who longs more than anything to be loved. In "Mission," an idealistic ESL teacher is faced with the inscrutable wrath of one of his immigrant students. And in the unsettling "Child's Play," Puchner explores the price of nonconformity by following a pack of boys wreaking havoc on Halloween. Writing from an impressive range of perspectives — men and women, children and adults, immigrants and tourists — Puchner deftly exposes the dark, ten-der undersides of his characters with arresting beauty and precision. Here are people fumbling for identity in a depersonalized world, captured in moments that are hilarious, shocking, and transcendent — sometimes all at once. Unfailingly true, surprisingly moving, and impossible to forget, these nine stories mark the arrival of a brilliant young writer and one of our most promising literary voices. Review:"No blurb can do justice to this book. It is riotously funny and smart and beautiful, as nuanced and unpredictable as real life. The stories are peopled with lonely human beings reaching for connection in cities where they are misunderstood. They are ten-year-old boys, teenaged girls, illegal immigrants, ESL teachers, Americans abroad-- yet somehow they are all us. This is the book you will keep by your bedside table, the one you will loan to friends and then feel compelled to steal back in the middle of the night. We are fortunate to have Puchner in our midst, his sharp vision trained upon our experience." -- Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Underwater Review:"The distance between childhood and adulthood, as Eric Puchner shows us, can be measured in light-years. Incandescent with language and humor, the stories in Music Through the Floor radiate enough intelligence, enough emotional gravity, to light our way. We depend on new writers to be sextants of the human condition. Eric Puchner, however, has positioned himself as a polestar." -- Adam Johnson, author of Emporium Review:"This is the most auspicious debut of a short story collection that I have encountered in years. Eric Puchner is a master of the perfect phrase and the perfect detail, and his stories are exceptionally wide-ranging in subject and tone: they can be funny, scary, and deeply moving, while the writing is at all times smart and emotionally courageous. Writers like Eric Puchner are keeping the short story form alive, and if there is any justice left in the world, this book will be widely read and celebrated." -- Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love and Saul and Patsy Synopsis:From an acclaimed young Wallace Stegner Fellow and Pushcart Prize winner comes an exceptional first collection of stories about cultural outcasts attempting to navigate mainstream America.
Synopsis:From an acclaimed young Wallace Stegner Fellow and Pushcart Prize winner comes an exceptional first collection of stories about cultural outcasts attempting to navigate mainstream America. Table of ContentsContents Children of God Essay #3: Leda and the Swan Child's Play Diablo Neon Tetra Legends A Fear of Invisible Tribes Animals Here Below Mission
What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
Other books you might like
Related Aisles
| |||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Don't Miss
