Synopses & Reviews
On the release of her first novel in 1948, Elizabeth Spencer was immediately championed by Robert Penn Warren and Eudora Welty, setting off a remarkable career as one of the great literary voices of the American South. Her career, now spanning seven decades, continues here with nine new stories. In , Spencer returns to the deep emotional fault lines and unseen fractures that lie just beneath the veneer of happy family life. In "Sightings," a troubled daughter suddenly returns to the home of the father she accidently blinded during her parents' bitter separation; in "Blackie," the reappearance of a son from a divorcee's first marriage triggers a harrowing confrontation with her new family; while in "The Wedding Visitor," a cousin travels home only to find himself entwined in the events leading up to a family wedding. In these nine stories, Spencer excels at revealing the flawed fabric of human relations.
Review
"There seems to be nothing this extraordinary writer can't do... Spencer recounts the details and doings of her characters in such spare, unfussy, almost conversational prose that she sounds at first like nothing so much as a shrewd family storyteller.... Spencer's great gift is her ability to take ordinariness and turn it inside out, to find focus in a muddle...Dazzling...a work of genius." Malcolm Jones
Review
"Spencer has a special gift for the nuances in "ordinary" human relationships; she creates suspense via anticipation more than through interactions themselves.... Spencer's strength lies in highlighting human truths in captured moments." New York Times Book Review
Review
"Spencer's elegant stories are more about what doesn't happen than what does.... Quiet and spare prose ferries tiny but explosive clues which point to powerful insights lurking between the lines.... In Spencer's world, the emotional debt ceiling is always on the rise." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Spencer's first work of fiction, a novel titled , was published in 1948, and, as affirmed by her new collection of short fiction, these many years have not dulled the sharpness of her prose nor inched her into out-of-date perceptions of the world. Grand dame of southern letters that Spencer is, she remains a vital, passionate, contemporary-issues writer. [These stories] show the control and ease of a master; each story has superb qualities of artistry and social relevance." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Spencer [is] an elegant and subtle writer.... Like Chekhov, the moments of most acute misery--those achingly common things that nearly kill us all--are offstage.... There are nine stories here, all wonderful, subtle and complex--which makes the cumulative effect all the more alarming." Brad Hooper Booklist, Starred Review
Review
"Spencer's stories dance with the illusion of happiness but swell with unspoken sadness. Humor bubbles to the surface in the most unexpected ways ...but that humor, too, is fragile.... is a veritable Whitman's sampler of bite-sized stories stitched together by their shared stillness." Ann Beattie San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"She is, as she ever was, one of America's best short story writers, with her invention and craft undimmed. Next time they bring out Spencer's they will have to wedge in at least two more masterpieces from ..." Michelle Moriarity Witt The Charlotte Observer
Synopsis
Winner of 2013 Rea Award for short fiction One of the masters of American short fiction--author of --returns with a new collection of stories.
About the Author
Winner of the PEN/Malamud Prize, Elizabeth Spencer , whose Light in the Piazza was turned into a Tony-Award winning musical, is the author of nine novels, six short story collections, a memoir, and a play. She lives in North Carolina.