And Both Shall Row: A Novella and Stories - Hardcover

Lordan, Beth

 
9780312186821: And Both Shall Row: A Novella and Stories
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0312186827 ISBN 13: 9780312186821
Verlag: Picador, 1998

Inhaltsangabe


A New York Times Notable Book.

And Both Shall Row: A Novella and Stories brings to life the people of Clayborne, a small town where tornado-driven cows and family excursions gain epic stature and matters of the heart are paramount.

And Both Shall Row, the novella that lends its title to this collection, is the poignant story of two sisters growing old together who finally face a lifetime of betrayals in the last moments of one sister's life.

Beth Lordan imbues her characters with dignity and hounds them with doubts, forming tender, subtle stories about loss, regret, and unabated love.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor


Beth Lordan grew up in upstate New York, and now teaches writing at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Her short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and other publications.

Rezensionen

Storytelling doesn't get much better than this first collection of short works. Lordan, a writing teacher in Illinois, expertly captures life in a fictional small Midwestern town. In "The Widow," a ghostly wife devotes herself to watching her husband's last days on Earth from above, taking pleasure in his idiosyncrasies; in "Running Out," a goodhearted man thinks his luck is about to change for the better when a single day brings a stream of simple pleasures and good omens. The title novella ends the collection with its carefully detailed and moving description of the relationship between two elderly sisters. When the younger sister, May, has a stroke, shattering the comfort of their daily routine, 80-year-old Margaret struggles with painful memories and overwhelming questions about the future. As in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon stories, all of Lordan's characters seem to know one another. Each story illuminates a different facet of the same community?taken as a whole, they provide a rich collage of experiences and emotions. Highly recommended.?Charlotte L. Glover, Ketchikan P.L., AK
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The six short stories and one novella in this collection show Lordan's (August Heat) skill at weaving a dense tapestry out of the most mundane detail and the darkest secrets hidden from the closest relatives. Precise prose generously laced with subtle wisdom serves to heighten the ominous tone that pervades the stories, as if almost imperceptible earthquakes threaten to upset the precarious balance of her characters' lives. The title novella, a history of two sisters in their 80s who live together in a small Midwestern town, reveals how little they really know about each other. When a stroke leaves the younger sister paralyzed and interrupts a daily routine that has kept painful memories at bay?both sisters had been married, at different times, to the same man?the truth of their loneliness and regret emerges with frightening intensity. Faced with breaking habits that held little consolation for them, they both contemplate suicide, and it is this last desperate act that finally establishes a measure of understanding between them. The remaining stories are set in the same locale and feature characters who are similarly locked into a way of life; they are generally baffled by fate but grateful for the small tendernesses and friendships that each day offers. Small, understated epiphanies bring them comfort, and sometimes inspiration, in their struggles over bitterness and disappointment. Lordan is definitely a writer to watch; she eschews flashy effects to build characters whose simple lives take on dignity and meaning.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A first collection from Lordan (August Heat, 1989) is an uneven gathering of six linked stories (some of them appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in the '80s) and a blistering title novella thats one of the finest works of its kind since Tillie Olsen's classic ``Tell Me a Riddle'' (which it substantially resembles). The stories explore with carefully restrained empathy the buried intellectual and even visionary dimensions of the stunted lives of rustic midwesterners (most of whom live in the town of Clayborne). Several characters keep reappearing in such tales as ``The Cow Story'' (about the eccentric behavior of bachelor Byron Doatze's cow as a tornado approachesand about Byron's own uncharacteristic bravado in the company of Clayborne's feisty spinster librarian) and ``The Dummy,'' a beautiful tale about a runaway mute boy whose intuitive fixation on a ventriloquist's doll likewise resembles, and mocks, Byron's failure to escape his self-imposed emotional shell. There's more than a whiff of Winesburg, Ohio in highly charged pieces like ``The Snake'' (a long-suffering housewife's ``heroism'' challenges her husband's lost control over the family's destiny) and ``The Widow'' (told by a ghost who remains in her house watching, and marveling at, the splendors'' exhibited by the taciturn husband she thought she knew). Two other stories, ``Running Out'' and ``Old Clayborne Trail,'' are inchoatebut then there's ``And Both Shall Row'': a novella about two elderly sisters, Margaret and May White, who live together in passive contentment, years after the death of the man they both had married in turn. The consequences of a disabling stroke suffered by May (who nevertheless narrates the story, in a triumph of technical dexterity) and of Margaret's stoical response to her daughter's ``arrangement'' of their fates are stunningly delineated in a story that just builds and builds to its heartstopping climax. A bit of a patchwork, but with brilliant work included. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Verlag
Picador
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312186827
ISBN 13 
9780312186821
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
176
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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