Ellen Gilchrist: Collected Stories - Hardcover

Gilchrist, Ellen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316299480 ISBN 13: 9780316299480

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2000

Synopsis

"Compulsively readable" (San Diego Union-Tribune) and "funny, slyly insightful" (New York Times Book Review) short stories from Ellen Gilchrist, the National Book Award-winning author who "deserves to be celebrated among the first rank of American writers" (Baltimore Sun).

Suffused with wit, irony, and the bittersweet complications of love, the writings of Ellen Gilchrist occupy a unique place in American fiction. From early novels such as The Annunciation to recent story collections such as Flight of Angels, Gilchrist writes with a keen insight into the foibles of human nature, while narrative the off-kilter lives of her delightfully eccentric and unforgettable characters.
The stories in this volume, selected by Gilchrist herself, constitute the best -- and best-loved -- the work of one of the finest storytellers in modern southern literature.

About this title

About the Author

Ellen Gilchrist is the critically acclaimed author of a number of novels and short story collections including Victory Over Japan, which won the National Book Award. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

From Booklist

Gilchrist's celebrated writing life began with a book of short stories, In the Land of the Dreamy Dreams (1984), and her second collection, Vic tory over Japan, won the 1985 National Book Award. She has switched back and forth between novels and short stories ever since, and her dulcet yet tensile voice has become an integral part of American literature. Gilchrist has now selected 34 of her favorite stories from seven collections to create a potent and pleasingly cohesive volume that showcases her deep sense of place and, the most salient feature of her work, her lusty, unpredictable, and unapologetic heroines. Gilchrist's women have refused to be contained within single stories. No matter how often she finds someone new to write about, and how far away she moves from the settings she knows best, and which she so affectionately yet critically portrays, such as Fayetteville, Arkansas, and New Orleans, her feisty and outspoken heroines track her down and insist on continuing their lives. Here, readers first meet the fearless and competitive Rhoda Katherine Manning as an ambitious third-grader and follow her through an elegant adulthood of extravagant gestures and determined independence. Nora Jane Whittington, a self-declared anarchist, leaves New Orleans for San Francisco, where she wins the adoration of the heroic Freddy Harwood, learns all about earthquakes, and becomes the mother of twin girls. And then there's Miss Crystal and her sharp-eyed maid, Traceleen. In each intriguing tale, Gilchrist brilliantly illuminates some quirky aspect of human nature, whether it's the territorial instinct at work in a snooty tennis club, the need for poetry and music, marital friction, the complexities of race, or the mysteries of love, all the while granting readers the boon of her humor, wisdom, and beautifully crafted prose. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0316299480
• ISBN 13: 9780316299480
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576