Synopses & Reviews
When Sybill Hess drives over to the hypnotists office, she hopes he can cure her of the headaches interrupting her sleep the way her friend Betty once saw a woman on TV cure a womans stammer. But what Dr. Diamond uncovers from Sybills subconscious goes much deeper than her nervousness over a new tenant who seems to want a date. A shocking memory from Sybills past threatens to upend everything she thinks she knows about herself and her family. But is it even real?
Review
“A lively, warmhearted, wickedly perceptive and extremely funny book.”—
Newsday
“Immensely difficult to put down.”—The Village Voice
“With great skill, humor, and understanding, Smith gradually reveals the Hess family linen for all to see.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A childhood memory relived through hypnosis, a funeral that brings about a family reunion, and the evacuation of a swimming pool on the site of an old well uncover a family secret in this darkly humorous novel…In the course of the story all the familys dirty linen is aired and Smith provides a behind-the-scenes look at life in a small Southern town.”—The Christian Science Monitor
Review
“Outstanding…Marvelous…Utterly enjoyable…One of the finest collections of short prose I’ve read since Bobbie Ann Mason.”
Review
“These stories capture the flavor of the South…With clever prose in ‘Blue Wedding,’ she is able to convey the poetic chatter of Southern voices that separates one class from another…Complex characters and surprising plot twists appear in the captivating ‘Live Bottomless.’ Smith has become a master at coupling tragedy and humor.”
Review
“Smith’s watchful, bright…heroines read true. [She] is terrific at creating fresh, evocative, and absolutely right voices in these stories. She can move between the breathless and innocent self-creation of the college student in ‘The Bubba Stories’ to the brittle self-delusion of the professional ‘fiancée’ in ‘The Southern Cross’ with sympathy and understanding.”
Review
“Reading Lee Smith is like coming home again, to find everything as you remembered.”
Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Lee Smith offers her signature mix of wit and heartbreak, as well as her “unerring ear for the lyrical and the down and dirty,” (
Atlanta Journal-Constitution) in this superb collection of stories.
About the Author
Lee Smith was born in Grundy, VA. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls, as well as many other novels and story collections.She is a winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, and the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.