Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This searing and exhilarating collection of essays from award-winning author of The Boys of My Youth examines life, love, death and all the complicated feelings that a person goes through during their most dire moments.
Since the publication of her groundbreaking book, The Boys of My Youth, Jo Ann Beard has been heralded as a master of the autobiographical essay. Now, Beard returns with nine pieces in which she investigates survival and grief, love and betrayal in the precise, vigorous, and intensely personal language that has made her work a touchstone to readers and writers everywhere.
In these genre-defying works, Beard captures both the unexpectedly luminous moments of daily existence and those in which life and death hang in the balance: a man jumps from a burning building to save his own life; a woman fights off a home invader with only a shovel; and in the title, novella-length story, the narrator contends with questions of love and mortality, friendship and betrayal.
With exquisite language and unflinching observation, Festival Days captures the pain and joy of our human experience, and shows a pioneering author at the pinnacle of her talent.
Synopsis
A searing and exhilarating new collection from the acclaimed author of The Boys of My Youth and In Zanesville
When "The Fourth State of Matter," her now famous piece about a workplace massacre at the University of Iowa was published in The New Yorker, Jo Ann Beard immediately became one of the most influential writers in America, forging a path for a new generation of young authors willing to combine the dexterity of fiction with the rigors of memory and reportage, and in the process extending the range of possibility for the essay form.
Now, with Festival Days, Jo Ann Beard brings us the culmination of her groundbreaking work. In these nine pieces, she captures both the small, luminous moments of daily existence and those instants when life and death hang in the balance, ranging from the death of a beloved dog to a relentlessly readable account of a New York artist trapped inside a burning building, as well as two triumphant, celebrated pieces of short fiction.
Here is an unforgettable collection destined to be embraced and debated by readers and writers, teachers and students. Anchored by the title piece--a searing journey through India that brings into focus questions of mortality and love--Festival Days presents Jo Ann Beard at the height of her powers, using her flawless prose to reveal all that is tender and timeless beneath the way we live now.
Synopsis
A searing and exhilarating new collection from the award-winning author of The Boys of My Youth and In Zanesville, who "honors the beautiful, the sacred, and the comic in life" (Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-
winner for The Friend) When "The Fourth State of Matter," her now famous piece about a workplace massacre at the University of Iowa was published in The New Yorker, Jo Ann Beard immediately became one of the most influential writers in America, forging a path for a new generation of young authors willing to combine the dexterity of fiction with the rigors of memory and reportage, and in the process extending the range of possibility for the essay form.
Now, with Festival Days, Beard brings us the culmination of her groundbreaking work. In these nine pieces, she captures both the small, luminous moments of daily existence and those instants when life and death hang in the balance, ranging from the death of a beloved dog to a relentlessly readable account of a New York artist trapped inside a burning building, as well as two triumphant, celebrated pieces of short fiction.
Here is an unforgettable collection destined to be embraced and debated by readers and writers, teachers and students. Anchored by the title piece--a searing journey through India that brings into focus questions of mortality and love--Festival Days presents Beard at the height of her powers, using her flawless prose to reveal all that is tender and timeless beneath the way we live now.