Synopses & Reviews
She is an artist - her stories are beautifully put together; even those that are in fact reveries are powerfully dramatic ... -- Joyce Carol Oates
Absolutely some of the best, richest, subtlest, craziest, finest writing ever about marriage, kids, sex ... LIFE. -- Alice Munro
...incandescent, utterly compelling ... [her] stories have the sureness and conviction of a first-rate original. -- The Gazette (Montreal)
Harvor's alert intelligence and her eye for the significant detail makes these stories accessible, yet deeply moving. -- Times Colonist (Victoria)
Glowing, fresh, ironic, unforgettable, the stories in Elisabeth Harvor's third collection, Let Me Be the One, introduce us to people who are trying to explore, however haphazardly, the themes of existence. And although the words let me be the one are never spoken by any of the characters whose lives we enter at moments of joy or upheaval, they are the words that are deeply felt, at one time or another. Let me be the one to get taken for a ride. Let me be the one not to get taken for a ride, Let me be the one to escape. Let me be the one he loves best. Let me be the one to make something of my life.
The voices in these extraordinary stories speak to the reader (and to one another) with passion and wit, longing and desperation. While each of these stories is remarkable in its own right, together they draw us into that uncharted emotional ground between men and women where memory and truth collide.
Table of Contents
Love begins with pity -- How will I know you? -- There goes the groom -- Invisible target -- A mad maze made by God -- Two women -- Freakish vine that I am -- Through the fields of tall grasses.