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Contributors | November 10, 2009

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Without knowing it, I'd always had two unspoken arrangements with the world. The first was that I would not trouble it with unpleasant conversation... Continue »
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1 Burnside Small Press- Fiction and Prose

Big World

by Mary Miller

Big World Cover

ISBN13: 9780974954189
ISBN10: 0974954187
All Product Details

Only 1 left in stock at $9.95!

Staff Pick

Miller is in complete control of the scenes she creates. Full of character details that are illuminating, familiar, and often distressing, Miller's sharp and assured stories remind me of that people-next-door quality that Raymond Carver perfected in his body of work. Her small and quiet world does indeed become a Big World in our imaginations.
Recommended by Kevin Sampsell, Powell's City of Books

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"Mary Miller's Big World is populated by women and girls....Their lives are not abnormal; their problems are relatively pedestrian: a beautiful waitress knows she has to keep sleeping with her boss to keep her job; a woman drinks because, if she quit, she'd 'have all this time on [her] hands'....Though Miller's characters inhabit circumscribed lives, they continue on with a strangely admirable tenacity." Sheila Ashdown, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Mary Miller's Big World is the second book and first work of fiction to come out of Short Flight/Long Drive Books, a publishing arm of the independent literary journal Hobart. The characters in Mary Miller's debut short story collection are at once autonomous and lonesome, possessing both a longing to connect with those around them and a cynicism regarding their ability to do so, whether they're holed up in a motel room in Pigeon Forge with an air gun shooting boyfriend as in "Fast Trains" or navigating the rooms of their house with their dad after their mother s death as in "Leak." Mary Miller's writing is unapologetically honest and efficient and the gut-wrenching directness of her prose is reminiscent of Mary Gaitskill and Courtney Eldridge, if Gaitskill's and Eldridge's stories were set in the south and reeked of spilt beer and cigarette smoke.

About the Author

Mary Miller's stories have been published in dozens of print and online journals, including Black Clock, Mississippi Review, McSweeney's Quarterly, Oxford American, Quick Fiction, elimae, Smokelong Quarterly, and Hobart. Her story "Leak" was selected by ZZ Packer for inclusion in New Stories from the South, 2008. She is currently a student at the Center for Writers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Muhammad Daheem, May 30, 2009 (view all comments by Muhammad Daheem)
Even small and ordinary people can make a 'big world'.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780974954189
Author:
Miller, Mary
Publisher:
Hobart Press
Binding:
TRADE PAPER

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