Awards
Winner of the 2001 Oregon Book Award.
Winner of the 1999 Sandstone Prize.
Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Astute, passionate and unmistakably wonderful, these insightful stories are rendered in language as strong as the characters Tinsley portrays. These are stories of survivors not victims and in every instance they make exceptional choices, choices that show us more about what is possible in the stubborn human soul. Perhaps what is most affecting is the way Tinsley's people reach toward each other rather than withdrawing into themselves. It has been years since I have read a collection that so strengthened my own resolve about the ability of the most desperate of us to confront and surmount the awful choices of our lives. This is a powerful writer working at the limits of her talent great talent and great work." Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
Review
"Awarded Ohio State's Sandstone Prize in Short Fiction, this debut collection of 12 stories is full of unassuming tales peopled with frightened characters who face and sometimes surmount dislocation, divorce, and despair....Most of Tinsley's protagonists are young women...and they learn young that the world will thwart them. Tinsley's better stories focus on older characters, like the 60-year-old widow who takes a nude figure-drawing class in the thought-provoking 'Affairs of Strangers'....Tinsley is a competent writer with a clean style and consistent tone, and the best stories here are agile expressions of longing and resiliency." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Throwing Knives is a compendium of lonely characters in various stances of isolation, caught avidly leaning toward connection. Divorcées who refuse to be hurt again, self-dramatizing children, a disillusioned navy wife their sadness is redeemed for us by Molly Best Tinsleys acute attentiveness and the calm, somewhat amused patience with which she considers their uneven progress toward fulfillment." Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After
About the Author
Molly Best Tinsley lives in Ashland, Oregon, and is the first professor emerita in the history of the Naval Academy. Her stories have appeared in such periodicals as Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Shenandoah, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She is also coauthor of The Creative Process.
Table of Contents
Zoe -- Square zero -- Figure drawing -- White -- Affairs of strangers -- Holiday -- The only way to ride -- Throwing knives -- Mother tongue -- Outbound -- Welcome advance -- Everyone catch on love.