Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Giardina is an accomplished short story writer in the tradition of Cheever and Updike, taking the angst of professional males (and some females) as his territory. But I find his stories morally troubling: the stories seem to be about characters whose lives are bleak and empty. But perhaps it is Giardina's vision that is bleak and empty, and so he makes cruel judgments about characters not because they are bankrupt but because they lead ordinary lives and don't quite know how else they should live. The author gives them no help, and I'm sure it has crossed his mind that you can live an ordinary life, sense that it is not limitless in its possibilities, and not plunge into the heart of darkness. But still the pitiless vision of the writer looking at these people is what dominates most of the stories. Giardina is talented, creative, and intelligent, but I sense a cruel streak." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
With this collection of stories, Anthony Giardina takes his place among the finest writers of short fiction in America.
The Country of Marriage is a window into the lives of men as they confront the darkness at the heart of domestic existence. Giardina looks at our relationships with an eye capable of clinical precision but never devoid of compassion, and gives voice to the emotions that lie unexplored and unexpressed beneath their seemingly placid surface.
In Days with Cecilia, a highly articulate shop teacher reveals by attrition the sexual secret of his marriage. In The Lake, a young fireman confronts his complicity in the murder of his best friend s wife. And in The Films of Richard Egan, the aborted career of an almost-was film star finds its echo in a suburban boy s life.
These are emotional landscapes at once familiar and unsettling, with characters who are instantly recognizable but endlessly surprising. Brilliantly observed and masterfully told, The Country of Marriage is an unforgettable montage of lives of dwindling promise, of stubborn hope, of emotional atrophy, and of the courage to take root in the indifferent soil of modern existence.
Anthony Giardina has an exquisite sense of the nuances of gesture and voice, the clamor of things unsaid. The New York Times Book Review"