Synopses & Reviews
Supple and precise, these stories cover lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Set in France, Italy, New York, and China, in the past and present, they are about longings about how sex and religion become parallel forms of dedication and comfort.
Though the stories stand alone, a minor element in one becomes major in the next. In "My Shape," a woman is taunted by her dance coach, who later suffers his own heartache. A Venetian poet of the 1500s, another storyteller, is introduced to a modern traveler reading Rilke. His story precedes a mesmerizing narrative of missionaries in China. In the final story, Giles, born to a priesthood family, leans toward Buddhism after a grievous loss, and in time falls in love with the dancer of the first story.
So deft and subtle is Joan Silber with these various perspectives that we come full circle surprised and enchanted by her myriad worlds.
Review
"[A] standout second collection from Silber....Silber travels the globe and the centuries with ease. If more collections were like this one, readers would gladly abandon the novel." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[S]o subtle and delicate in its construction that the connections seem to arise more from fortunate happenstance than deliberate design....Wonderfully evocative of time and place, this is a collection to be read and savored by all." Danise Hoover, Booklist
Review
"Silber uses the ingenious approach of bringing one character, object, or thought forward into the next story to create a ring of narratives that have no real beginning or end....Recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Here Joan Silber renders the thirsts and devotions of six lives with clarifying exactitude." Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector
Review
"Joan Silber writes with wisdom, humor, grace, and wry intelligence. Her characters bear welcome news of how we will survive." Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever
Review
"Like a gymnast off a springboard, Joan Silber begins this, and many other flawlessly pitched paragraphs in her recent story collection, with a punch a short, simple sentence that establishes a particular. She sticks her landing, too (having traveled some distance in the meantime), with another demonstration of muscle: two final sentences, as arresting in their slow pace and awkward construction as the epiphany they describe." Christina Schwarz, the Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
Supple and precise, these stories cover lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Set in France, Italy, New York, and China, in the past and present, they are about longings about how sex and religion become parallel forms of dedication and comfort.
About the Author
Joan Silber teaches at Sarah Lawrence and Warren Wilson Colleges, and lives in New York City. Her first novel, Lucky Us, received the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Table of Contents
My Shape 13
The High Road 35
Gaspara Stampa 65
Ashes of Love 97
Ideas of Heaven 143
The Same Ground 200