Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The women at the center of Curious Affairs are by turns joyful, bitter, filled with wonder, worn down, acutely self-aware, and often deeply in need of perspective. While light and playful in tone, Mary Jane Myers' debut short story collection reflects the hollowness and toxicity created by ascribing too strictly to the popularly held values of our society. Administrative assistants, typists, accountants--women who are lonely and stuck in lives that have begun to feel too small--begin to awake unto themselves. Brushes with the surreal prompt these women to examine stale or faltering lives.
Louise, an unassuming tourist, is accosted in a museum in Florence by the voice of Galileo's finger bone promising to grant her greatest wish in return for a simple favor. Diane narrowly escapes a toxic relationship and sinks into a depression when she becomes convinced the gods are speaking to her through a stone from the lava fields of Maui. Helen, who has always wanted someone with whom to appreciate classical music, ends up playing host to Franz Schubert, when she meets the young composer wandering in the woods near her home in the Santa Monica Mountains. Witty, revelatory--and at times chilling--Curious Affairs allows us to see the strangeness in the ordinary.
Mary Jane Myers lives in Los Angeles, where she is a certified public accountant. She holds degrees from the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Southern California Law School. Curious Affairs is her debut collection of short stories.
Synopsis
"Mary Jane Myers skillfully paints the many shades of loneliness. . . A highly thought-provoking collection."--Daniel M. Jaffe, editor of With Signs and Wonders: An International Anthology of Jewish Fabulist Fiction; author of The Genealogy of Understanding
Bitter, joyful, worn down, filled with wonder, acutely self-aware, and often deeply in need of perspective--such are the women at the center of Mary Jane Myers' compelling debut short story collection. Lonely and stuck in lives that have begun to feel stale, these ordinary women--administrative assistants, typists, accountants--awake unto themselves after brushes with the surreal. While light and playful in tone, the stories reflect the hollowness and toxicity that can come from ascribing too strictly to the popularly held values of our contemporary society and the confusion caused by wobbly religious beliefs in a secular world.
Louise, an unassuming tourist, is accosted in a museum in Florence by the voice of Galileo's finger bone promising to grant her greatest wish in return for a simple favor. Diane narrowly escapes a toxic relationship and sinks into a depression when she becomes convinced the gods are speaking to her through a stone from the lava fields of Maui. Helen, who has always wanted someone with whom to appreciate classical music, ends up playing host to Franz Schubert, when she meets the young composer wandering in the woods near her home in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Witty, revelatory―and at times chilling―Curious Affairs allows us to see the strangeness in the ordinary.
Mary Jane Myers lives in Los Angeles. Curious Affairs is her debut collection of short stories.