Synopses & Reviews
Twenty-five of her stories appeared regularly in The New Yorker within a ten-year period. Others were published in The Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and McCall's. Her work was included in twenty-three O. Henry Award collections, and she received first prize six times; she was represented in numerous collections of Martha Foley's Best American Short Stories.
Now the best of Alice Adams's short fiction is gathered in one volume-fifty-three stories that illumine the hidden workings of human relationships. In "Verlie I Say Unto You," the unexpected death of Verlie Jones's lover reveals the unsettling truth about her employers-that, though they "couldn't get along without" Verlie, their maid of ten years, she is nothing more than a stranger to them. In "Berkeley House," a disenfranchised daughter anguished over the sale of her childhood home finally succeeds in winning the house back, only to discover that it does not hold the key to her happiness, and perhaps never did. In "Greyhound People," a woman repeatedly, and purposely, takes the wrong bus home from work after meeting its warm and disarmingly candid cast of passengers, a refreshing and life-changing break from the coldly polite company she finds on the "right" bus-and at home.
In story after story, insight joins with grace to show us the truth about the lives of people around us. A moving and elegant collection and the capstone to the brilliant career of one of the most beloved American writers of our time.
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"No other writer in recent memory has called to mind quite so clearly the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Washington Post
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"[A] master of the genre..." Los Angeles Times
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"Taken together, these stories betray the changing mores of the past half-century; taken in sequence, they trace the changes in the American short story over the past 40 years, some of those changes wrought by Adams herself." Publishers Weekly
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"In the hands of an artist, a well-placed brush stroke can evoke a bird in flight or a shadow. Similarly, with her pen Adams indeed became the master of the encapsulated moment." Library Journal
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"Very uneven, then, but never less than readable and engaging. Adams's many admirers will welcome this generous display of her work." Kirkus Reviews
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"Quintessentially American in her sensibility, Adams is nonetheless cosmopolitan in her worldview, writing with equal insight and conviction about the repressive mores of the South, the ambitiousness of San Francisco, and the often ludicrous, sometimes epiphanic adventures of Americans abroad." Booklist
About the Author
Alice Adams was born in Virginia and raised in North Carolina, and graduated from Radcliffe College. She was the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was the author of five collections of short stories and ten novels, among them Listening to Billie, Superior Women, Second Chances, and A Southern Ex-posure. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.