Synopses & Reviews
In this stunningly original collection of seventeen short stories, Terese Svoboda navigates a terrain of alienation and loss with searing, poetic prose. “I talk like a lady who knows what she wants,” begins the vagrant narrator of the title story. She insists theres a wild child hiding among the cows in the gully near her home. Others in the trailer park think its just herself shes chasing, but no one helps her sort out the truth—until theres a murder. Stark and disturbing, “Trailer Girl” is a story of cycles of child abuse and the dream to escape them. In “Psychic” a clairvoyant knows shes been hired by a murderer, in “Leadership” a tiny spaceship lands between a boy and his parents, in “Lost the Baby” a partying couple forget where they dropped off their baby, and in “White” a grandfather explains to his grandson how a family is like a collection of chicken parts. Frequently violent, always passionate, these often short short stories are not the condensed versions of longer works but are full-strength, as strong and precise as poetry. Watch the .
Review
“Fabulous fabulist Svoboda checks in to indulge a talent for wild, sketchy comedy. Laid in Willa Cather country, this quick take has some of Thomas Pynchons quirky Americana crossed with the Indian tales of Jaime de Angulo. . . . Svoboda loves her red-state mopes, and that warmth both illuminates and animates her eccentric prose.”—Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly
Review
"It's hard to spell out dreams—to rein them in, to make the story under our lives rise to the surface. Terese Svoboda brings a light hand, a pinch of humor and a lot of irreverence to this weighty task with her new novel, Tin God. . . . [T]he wisdom of Tin God lies in the idea that, in dreams, some people get within spitting distance of God, while others sleep the sleep of forgetting."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Susan Salter Reynolds
Review
"Svoboda's fiction is marked by the same dark felicity of language found in her poetry. . . . A sense of urgency pervades all of her work, giving the words a pulse, making her language race with insistence."—Timothy Schaffert, Poets and Writers Los Angeles Times
Review
"Svoboda's fiercely symbolic and brashly audacious allegory is a fanciful yet cautionary tale."—Booklist Timothy Schaffert - Poets and Writers
Review
"In this book, god is not a solemn, dignified deity but a wisecracking woman with attention deficit disorder—the intentionally lower-case, working-class version of a supreme being. . . . Readers will find Svobodas perspective on God, faith, and the impulses that drive human behavior original and quirky. Her characters are self-absorbed buffoons at times but totally believable. This funny romp is very highly recommended for public libraries."—Library Journal Booklist
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“Tin God is a unique and thrilling ride through Gods country and the human imagination.”—Mariya Gusev, Literary Review Library Journal
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"Tin God is confidently-written, often beautiful, sometimes profane, and strange in the best possible way. . . . It seems to me that Terese Svoboda is a true original."Emily St. John Mandel, The Millions Library Journal
Review
“Set against the backdrop of the Nebraska prairie, Joerns powerful second offering follows three generations as they navigate the greater part of the 20th century. . . . Evocative prose elevates Joerns excellent portrayal of the familys evolution and brings a warmth and richness to a stark landscape.”—Publishers Weekly
Review
"The clarity and honesty of Joern's prose impart a quiet intensity to this novel about three generations of a family enduring a hardscrabble existence in western Nebraska. Shaped by place and by each other, strong, flawed characters struggle through love and pain to create rich and dignified lives well worthy of our attention."—Tripp Ryder, Carleton College Bookstore, Shelf Awareness
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"As with Joerns previous novel, The Floor of the Sky, Joerns writing is evocative and riveting, revealing her deep respect for those who live, and even thrive, on the plains."—Helene Williams, Historical Novels Review
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"Joern has a gift for illuminating a character's inner life without speaking over much of it. She adeptly mixes past and present tense, effectively linking past and present, story and memory. . . . Kudos to the University of Nebraska Press' Flyover Fiction series for bringing Joern's work to light. May there be more forthcoming."—Pamela Miller, Minneapolis Star Tribune
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"Immerse yourself in her novels and discover the truths she writes about."—Glenda Martin, Minnesota Womens Press
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"With clean, polished and illuminating prose, Joern takes us through the highs and lows, marriage, divorce, children, disappointments, triumphs and sibling rivalries of several generations of one Nebraska clan. . . . It's a saga to be read again and again by an author who's already made a name for herself."—Barbara Rixstine, Lincoln Journal Star
Review
“Trailer Girl has the surreal poetry of a nightmare. . . . Svoboda has written a book of genuine grace and beauty.”—New York Times Book Review
Review
“Unnerve thyself: the violent and enthralling short stories in Terese Svobodas Trailer Girl detonate on contact.”—Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
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“The kind of satisfaction that one gets from [Svobodas] stories is quick and blinding, governed more by instinct than reason.”—Francie Lin, San Francisco Chronicle
Review
“Compelling. . . . The language throughout is at once potent and oblique.”—Publishers Weekly
Review
“You have to listen, carefully, to Terese Svobodas stories. You have to read them slowly, more than once, sounding the words this way and that, letting yourself interpret, not with logic alone, but using the tools of poetry-association, juxtaposition, metaphor. Even whats left out can be significant. For these are not so much stories in the traditional sense as tangled situations, networks of convoluted yet precisely controlled language. And you dont read through them, but into them, going deeper each time.”—Womens Review of Books
Review
"Written in the style of dreamy prose poems about the alienated and edgy lives of the walking wounded, these stories shimmer and dazzle with an intensity that sometimes creates the feeling of the world as a floating, melting cloud of illusion."—Cheryl Reeves, Feminist Review
Synopsis
-This is God, - the novel begins, and we are spinning on our way into the heart of a Midwest that spans spirits and centuries and forever redefines the middle of nowhere.
Whispers plague a desperate conquistador lost in tall prairie grass. Four hundred years later, a male go-go dancer flings a bag of dope into the same field. God, in the person of a perm-giving, sheetcake-baking Nebraska farm woman, casts a jaundiced yet merciful eye over the unfolding chaos. Fire and a pair of judiciously applied pantyhose bring the two stories together. A contemplation of divinity and drugs on the ground, Tin God is a funny yet poignant, time-shifting story of the plains that transcends its interstate spine and exposes us to a whole new level of Terese Svoboda's fiery prose.
Synopsis
Celebrated by the New York Times Book Review for its “genuine grace and beauty,” Terese Svoboda’s work has been called “desperate, chilling, seductive” (Vogue) and “haunting and profound” (A. M. Homes), while Vanity Fair warned that it “detonates on contact.” In Tin God, her writing can only be called . . . divine. “This is God,” the novel begins, helpfully spelling G-O-D for the reader, and we are spinning on our way into the heart of a Midwest that spans spirits and centuries and forever redefines the middle of nowhere. Whispers plague a desperate conquistador lost in tall prairie grass. Four hundred years later, a male go-go dancer flings a bag of dope into the same field. God, in the person of a perm-giving, sheetcake-baking Nebraska farm woman, casts a jaundiced yet merciful eye over the unfolding chaos. Fire and a pair of judiciously applied pantyhose bring the two stories together. A contemplation of divinity and drugs on the ground, Tin God is a funny yet poignant story of the plains that transcends its interstate spine and exposes us to a whole new level of Svoboda’s fiery prose.
Synopsis
In prose as clean and beautiful as the stark prairie setting, The Plain Sense of Things tells the stories of three generations of a western Nebraska family. These tales of sorrow and hope are connected by the sinews of need and flawed love that keep families together. A farm wife struggles to support her children after the death of her second husband; a young woman grapples with the shift from girlhood to motherhood; World War II wreaks havoc on those left behind; and a failing farmstead breaks a familys heart. Amid hardship and change, these interwoven stories illuminate the resilience and dignity—and the subtle sweetness—of a life lived in clear view of the plain sense of things. Download a Study Guide (pdf).
About the Author
Terese Svoboda, a native of Ogallala, Nebraska, is the author of five volumes of poetry and four novels, including
Bohemian Girl (Nebraska, 2011); a collection of short stories,
Trailer Girl and Other Stories (Nebraska, 2009); a nonfiction book,
Black Glasses Like Clark Kent: A GIs Secret from Postwar Japan, winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize; and a
New York Times Book Review Writers Choice selection,
Cleaned the Crocodiles Teeth, translated from the Nuer, the language of a South Sudanese people, many of whom have settled in Nebraska.