Synopses & Reviews
Winner, 2011 Balcones Fiction Prize
Unlike the heroines of domestic fiction, Katherine Karlins women face their biggest challenges outside of the house. The characters in this debut collection encompass a broad range of experience: a struggling young woman in post-Katrina New Orleans persuades a welder to teach her his trade; an orchestra oboist hears a confession from a beloved teacher; an idealistic aerobics instructor decamps for revolution- era Nicaragua to pick coffee on a farming collective.
In each of these stories, Karlin offers rare insight into the place of work in the lives of women, her narrators keenly observant and attuned to the humor that arises when life doesnt turn out as planned. But even more remarkable is the fullness with which she renders characters who make us wonder how theyve escaped the notice of other writers. In unadorned prose that evokes complete worlds with deceptive ease, Karlin shows us people immersed in the negotiations of survival, just at the edge of being able to make sense of their lives.
Review
“The stories here are note-perfect and consistently gratifying.” —Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia: A Novel
Synopsis
Winner of 2011 Balcones Fiction Prize
The stories in Katherine Karlin's debut collection encompass an unusually broad range of experience - refinery workers mourn a colleague's death; a struggling young woman in post-Katrina New Orleans persuades a welder to teach her his trade; an idealistic aerobics instructor decamps for Nicaragua to pick coffee. In each of these stories, Karlin offers rare insight into the place of work in the lives of women, her narrators keenly observant and attuned the humor arising from the gap between life as they imagine it and as it's really lived. But even more remarkable is the fullness with which she renders characters who, once we meet them, make us wonder how they've escaped the notice of other writers.
About the Author
Katherine Karlin is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English at Kansas State University. In addition to publishing stories in various journals, her work has been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South.
Table of Contents
Bye-bye, Larry
The Severac Sound
Muscle Memory
Send Me Work
Into the Blue Again
Staggered Maturities
Stand Up Scout
The Good Word
Underwater
Seven Reasons
Geography