History on a Personal Note: Stories - Softcover

Kirshenbaum, Binnie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060520892 ISBN 13: 9780060520892

Publisher: Ecco, 2004

Synopsis

From New York City to the former East Germany, from rural Virginia to affluent suburbia, the characters in these short stories grapple with love, loss, greed, perversion, and other awful truths as they try to transcend their limitations with occasional humor and dignity. In "History on a Personal Note," Lorraine, a Southerner, wonders if her German paramour will find the inspiration to leave his wife amidst the destruction of the Berlin Wall. In "Viewing Stacy from Above," a pregnant woman descends into a pit of despair as she contemplates the constraints of motherhood. In "Money Honey," a young adulteress who ditches her husband is reprimanded by an extended family of elders whose morals are even more dubious than her own.

Contemplative, allegorical, and witty, History on a Personal Note takes us into a world laced with black humor and makes us laugh - until it hurts.

About this title

About the Author:

Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of An Almost Perfect Moment, On Mermaid Avenue, A Disturbance in One Place, Pure Poetry, Hester Among the Ruins, and History on a Personal Note. She is a professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts, where she is chair of the Graduate Writing Program.

From Booklist:

Kirshenbaum has a strong moral aptitude and a ballistic sense of humor, launching anti-assumption rockets with cool precision. Her targets are the bland sentimentalities of romance and unexamined family life, the blank-eyed acceptance of prejudice, and the superficial presumptions of sexism. In this set of poignant and piquant short stories, Kirshenbaum explores the interface of grand events and ordinary lives, particularly the lives of women. Several stories, including the title story, revolve around the friendship of the narrator, a New York Jew, and Lorraine, an eccentric Southerner, and examine such things as the reunification of Germany, the brief reign of the Kennedys, and the anemia of TV's Mayberry. In other tales, Kirshenbaum's women want, truly, to be alone and free of clinging men and children. Her candor about the female psyche is not unlike Margaret Atwood's, but her feisty voice, gutsy humor, mischievous dispassion, and gift for setting scenes and conjuring moments of realization are all her own. Her last novel, Disturbance in One Place (1994), was widely praised. Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060520892
• ISBN 13: 9780060520892
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192