Synopses & Reviews
From the Pulitzer and Story Prize winner: sixteen new stories — provocative, funny, disturbing, magical — that delve into the secret lives and desires of ordinary people, alongside retellings of myths and legends that highlight the aspirations of the human spirit.
Beloved for the lens of the strange he places on small-town life, Steven Millhauser further reveals inVoices in the Night the darkest parts of our inner selves to brilliant and dazzling effect. Here are stories of wondrously imaginative hyperrealism, stories that pose unsettling what-ifs or that find barely perceivable evils within the safe boundaries of our towns, homes, and even our bodies. Here, too, are stories culled from religion and fables: from Samuel, who in the masterly "A Voice in the Night" hears the voice of God calling him in the night; to a young, pre-enlightenment Buddha; to Rapunzel and her Prince awakened only to everyday disappointment. Heightened by magic, the divine, and the uncanny, shot through with sly humor,Voices in the Night seamlessly combines the whimsy and surprise of the familiar with intoxicating fantasies that take us beyond our daily lives, all done with the hallmark sleight of hand and astonishing virtuosity of one of our greatest modern storytellers.
Review
"Pulitzer Prize winner Millhauser imbues classic fables with a hyperrealistic sensibility in this collection of 16 stories. In his capable hands, figures like Rapunzel, Buddha, and Paul Bunyan assume new and dazzling nuances." Time
Review
"The stories in Voices in the Night revise traditional tales, entwine shadows of individual terror and community panic, and dazzle with nimble allegory. Millhauser's characters seek improvement, order and happiness, usually finding or making trouble in the process....In these stories he savors the perverse, morbid and dark; yet some tales add lighter touches to scriptural history and the fairy canon. His virtuosity is evident." Valerie Miner, Chicago Tribune
Review
"Captivating stories, whose decidedly fantastic perspective on what we like to think of as ordinary life infuses mundane existence with a persistent sense of mystery and wonder. Millhauser's gift lies in his ability to maintain plausibility while at the same time allowing surreal qualities to flourish....In these enchanting, unsettling stories, Millhauser bursts the boundaries of the world we think we know, to help us see it anew." Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness
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"Millhauser gives us worlds upon worlds — wistful and warped, comic and chilling — that by story's end, feel as intimate as our own reflections." Tania James, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Vividly imaginative....In this new collection, Pulitzer Prize-winner Millhauser draws a gauzy curtain of hyper-reality over mundane events and creates an atmosphere of uneasiness that accelerates to dread. He establishes tense yet wondrous tones while never resorting to melodrama; his cool, restrained voice is profoundly effective....The cumulative effect [of] the voices throughout is to transport the reader to an alternate world in which the uncanny lurks pervasively beneath the surface." Publishers Weekly
Review
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short-story writer Millhauser, celebrated for exploring the strangeness lurking in everyday life, riff[s] on classic and religious fables. His inventiveness shows no sign of waning....Throughout the collection, he veers into the realm of fantasy with unsettling and mordantly funny results." Carmela Ciuraru, The New York Times
About the Author
STEVEN MILLHAUSER is the author of numerous works of fiction, including Martin Dressler, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1997, and, most recently, We Others: New and Selected Stories, winner of The Story Prize and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His work has been translated into seventeen languages, and his story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" was the basis of the 2006 film The Illusionist. He teaches at Skidmore College.