Synopses & Reviews
Deborah Eisenberg is nearly unmatched in her mastery of the short-story form. Now, in her newest collection, she demonstrates once again her virtuosic abilities in precisely distilled, perfectly shaped studies of human connection and disconnection.
From a group of friends whose luck in acquiring a luxurious Manhattan sublet turns to disaster as their balcony becomes a front-row seat to the catastrophe of 9/11; to the Roman holiday of a schoolteacher running away from the news of her ex-husband's life-threatening illness, and her unlikely guide, a titled art scout in desperate revolt against his circumstances and aging; to the too painful love of a brother for his schizophrenic sister, whose tragic life embitters him to the very idea of family, Eisenberg evokes "intense, abundant human lives" in which "everything that happens is out there waiting for you to come to it."
Review
"Eisenberg's seventh collection of stories...confirms her talent for fiction that, like Chekhov's, insinuates you right into the characters' gnarled hearts, by methods so subtle and slippery that you're not sure where you are or how you got there." Lisa Zeidner, The Washington Post
Review
"Instead of forcing her characters' stories into neat, arbitrary, preordained shapes, [Ms. Eisenberg] allows them to grow organically into oddly shaped, asymmetrical narratives narratives that possess all the surprising twists and dismaying turns of real life." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
"Complex relationships and troubling histories are skillfully telescoped in Eisenberg's new collection of six urbane, probing stories....Not quite equal to Eisenberg's All Around Atlantis, but she's still the closest thing there is to an American Alice Munro." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Its half-dozen long stories put [Eisenberg] light-years ahead of most story writers....These are special stories, with their new effects, their modulations of colors and light you have to listen carefully, but when you do, they sound like ethereal chamber music." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"[O]ffers commanding proof that in the right hands, the short story can be a legitimate art form, not just a test run for writers warming up to write a novel....[M]achines of perfect revelation deftly constructed by a contemporary master." Ben Marcus, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"In her best stories, Deborah Eisenberg plunges without preamble into the hyperactive inner world of talky, middle-aged Americans....Like others who have tackled 9/11, Eisenberg hasn't figured out how to translate the enormous event into human-scale fiction. (Grade: B)" Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Eisenberg is indeed a master of the short story. She succeeds much more often than she fails because she brilliantly exploits what the form does best." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Review
"Eisenberg's fourth book of new work, Twilight of the Superheroes, seems to have been the longest in the making (nine years have passed since the publication of All Around Atlantis). The six stories here feel especially new, perhaps because they didn't appear in large-circulation magazines (what's up over there at The New Yorker?). They are her most ambitious and beautiful works to date. Can it be true that with talent, effort, the ability to keep at it, and a quite short haircut one eventually becomes great? It has worked for Deborah Eisenberg." Mona Simpson, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
A collection of short works by the author of The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg includes the tales of a group of friends whose efforts to acquire a luxurious Manhattan sublet are halted by the September 11 attacks, a teacher's Roman holiday in the wake of her husband's life-threatening illness, and a brother's painful love for his schizophrenic sister. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.
Synopsis
Deborah Eisenberg is nearly unmatched in her mastery of the short-story form. Now, in her newest collection, she demonstrates once again her virtuosic abilities in precisely distilled, perfectly shaped studies of human connection and disconnection. From a group of friends whose luck in acquiring a luxurious Manhattan sublet turns to disaster as their balcony becomes a front-row seat to the catastrophe of 9/11, to the too painful love of a brother for his schizophrenic sister, Eisenberg brilliantly "illustrates the lives of people rubbed raw by what the fates have sent them" (
Vanity Fair).
A PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
An Atlantic Monthly Book of the Year
A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year
In her newest collection, Deborah Eisenberg demonstrates her abilities in precisely distilled studies of an American reality that has become increasingly chaotic, brutal, and out of control, both personally and politically. From a group of variously ambitious friends delighted to find a luxurious sublet just across from the World Trade Center in the year 2000; to a family whose tranquility is strangely poisoned by its years spent in poor foreign lands; to the too-painful love of a brother for his schizophrenic sister, whose life embitters him to the very idea of family, Eisenberg widens her range to focus her eye on a terrifying contemporary world in which "everything that happens is out there waiting for you to come to it."
About the Author
Deborah Eisenberg is the author of four previous collections of stories. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rea Award for the Short Story, she lives in New York City.