Bone by Bone: Stories - Hardcover

Krist, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151820643 ISBN 13: 9780151820641

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994

Synopsis

For the Garden State, his 1988 collection of short stories, Gary Krist received the highly prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The reviews were entusiastic. "Smart and tender short stories written with enticing crispness...Krist is a remarkable writer, and just starting," said the Los Angeles Times. Bone by Bone, like the Garden State, takes its characters from the middle class of New Jersey, adding Brooklyn and upstate New York. Children, lovers, senior citizens; salesmen, morticians, college administrators. People of every possible sexual persuasion-including those who are not sure. But while Krist's humor thrives, his canvas now has darker, deeper tones as he explores the loneliness of misfits, the pain of separations, and the uneasiness of everyday relationships. A thought provoking, different, memorable collection of short stories, beautifully written.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Michael Krist (born 1957) is an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, travel journalism, and literary criticism. Before turning to narrative nonfiction with The White Cascade (2007), a book about the 1910 Wellington avalanche, Krist wrote three novels--Bad Chemistry (1998), Chaos Theory (2000), and Extravagance (2002). He has also written two short story collections--The Garden State (1988) and Bone by Bone (1994).

He has been a frequent book reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and The Washington Post Book World. His satire pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Outlook section, and Newsday, and his stories, articles, and travel pieces have been featured in National Geographic Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Playboy, The New Republic, Esquire, and on National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts." His short stories have also been anthologized in such collections as Men Seeking Women, Writers' Harvest 2, and Best American Mystery Stories.

He has been the recipient of The Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Krist is a graduate of Princeton University. In 1979-80, he studied literature at the Universitaet Konstanz (Germany) on a Fulbright Scholarship. The author has been profiled in The New York Times Book Review (November 6, 1988) and the Style section of The Washington Post (February 25, 2007).

Krist lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife and daughter.

 Works

• Novels and Story Collections
  • The Garden State (1988)
  • Bone by Bone (1994)
  • Bad Chemistry (1998)
  • Chaos Theory (2000)
  • Extravagance (2002)

• Nonfiction
  • The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche (2007)

Reviews

Probing the quiet depths of suburban desperation, Krist ( The Garden State ) extends the lessons of Cheever and Updike while steering his second short-story collection in some decidedly odd directions. The author has a knack for creating characters who teeter between the ordinary and the ridiculous, and he is at his best when combining humor or empathy with a conventional situation turned sideways or upside down. "Ever Alice," the tale of a casual lover who turns out to be a near-femme fatale, opens with the delightful teaser, "The first thing she ever did to me was ruin Emily Dickinson." "Hungry," set in Westchester, relates the adventures of Frank, an assistant embalmer who decides to move to Hungry, Alaska, and finds half the residents of his town eager to come along for the ride. On the more serious side, "Baggage" conveys the anguish of a man who decides to leave a relationship as his lover faces the steady decline caused by her cerebral palsy. Lesser entries are emotionally effective but have plots that lean toward stereotype. "Eclipse" captures the chagrin of a newly divorced man who's about to be displaced, while the three "Erickson Stories" confront the decline and fall of a marriage. Krist is a promising talent, a banner carrier for the long-awaited renaissance of the short story.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In his welcome second collection of polished and perceptive stories, Krist ( The Garden State , Harcourt, 1988) compassionately and humorously limns the lives of people in trouble. In "Baggage," a man's friends jauntily gather to help him move; everyone knows but no one mentions that he is leaving his crippled girlfriend. The lovely, bittersweet "Eclipse" chronicles a divorced man's outing with his sons to watch the solar eclipse. As each tale unfolds, characters and situations become more unconventional: in "Bone by Bone," a woman cuts herself off from the outside world as she retreats into insanity; and "Medicated" shows a widow still fragile after the senseless murder of her husband beginning a dangerous relationship with a mentally unstable man. Three related stories movingly explore a disintegrating marriage from the son's point of view; in the third, "Numbers," Krist artfully evokes a boy's coming of age at the time of the Vietnam draft lottery. Recommended for most collections.
- Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the title story of this satisfying collection, Hilma Vlieck is an indexer of books who has more than one pressing problem. An urgent deadline demands she toil away on her latest project, but constant telephone calls (from her editor pressuring her to complete the task at hand and her soon-to-be ex-husband imploring her to consider a reconciliation) only serve to exacerbate a tense situation. In this and many of his stories, Krist presents a quirky and soulful scenario consisting of a commonplace predicament that requires something more than his bewildered character has to give. Alice Joyce

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151820643
• ISBN 13: 9780151820641
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256