In a Bear's Eye

"Stories like beautiful black diamonds. Someone has cut you while you were dreaming, slipped them into your muscles, your mind. You may never know just how you've been changed."-Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury

The title story was included in The O.Henry Prize Stories 2007.

"In 24 brief, impressionistic tales, Murphy (Signed, Mata Hari) delivers an emotional wallop. The title story concerns a widow and her young son attempting to carry on after the suicide of the husband and father — and finding a watchful bear's presence near their house more protective than menacing. 'Pan, pan, pan,' one of the longer stories, is named for the urgency call emitted by a plane that crashes near a lake where a family of three along with the brother-in-law is vacationing. The narrator is the nervous wife, whose small son is enthralled both by the overbearing brother-in-law and by details of the plane crash. Some of the stories capture a vernacular quirkiness, such as 'Lester,' a stream-of-consciousness narrative by an angry urban dweller who's bitter that he'll never get to see the palm trees of Barbados, or the sky's constellations (the 'Big Zipper,' he calls one of them), for that matter. Similarly, in 'The Beauty in Bulls,' two men carry on a perpendicular conversation, one about bullfighting, the other about the rapturous body of a woman, that eventually dovetails into a testosterone-charged assertion of power and might. Murphy's tight, sharp sense of composition and tone renders these short takes more than mere formal exercises." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Yannick Murphy is a true original. Her gorgeous, poetic sentences are entirely her own. The marvelous stories in In a Bear's Eye catch you by surprise, with a consistent and steady pace that pack a wallop at the same time. Elizabeth Crane, author of You Must be This Happy to Enter

Yannick Murphy can do in three pages what takes most writers ten or twenty. Her sentences, many of them pure poetry, pull you in with their effortless beauty, making you laugh one minute, then crushing your heart in the next. You can't stop reading. You can't wait to find out who you'll meet next. You will not forget this poignant, richly textured, and stunning collection. And you have never seen anything like it. Rebecca Barry, author of Later at the Bar

Great collection from this Gordon Lish - influenced writer, including O.Henry Award collected title story.

The title story was included in The O.Henry Prize Stories 2007.

After twenty years, In a Bear's Eye marks Yannick Murphy's return, in collection form, to the short story. The title story of this, her second story collection, was recently included in the 2007 O'Henry Prize Stories anthology.

Yannick Murphy is the author of Stories in Another Language, The Sea of Trees, Here They Come, Signed, Mata Hari, and Ahwooooooooo!, a book for children. The recipient of a Whiting Writers'Award, an NEA Fellowship, and a MacDowell Artists'Colony fellowship, she lives with her husband and three children in Vermont.