Bark - Softcover

Lorrie Moore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571273912 ISBN 13: 9780571273911

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2014

Synopsis

In these eight masterful stories, Lorrie Moore, explores the passage of time, and summons up its inevitable sorrows and comic pitfalls. In 'Debarking', a newly divorced man tries to keep his wits about him as the US prepares to invade Iraq. In 'Foes', a political argument goes grotesquely awry as the events of 9/11 unexpectedly manifest at a fundraising dinner in Georgetown. In 'The Juniper Tree', a teacher, visited by the ghost of her recently deceased friend, is forced to sing 'The Star Spangled Banner' in a kind of nightmare reunion. And in 'Wings', we watch the unraveling of two once-hopeful musicians, who neither held fast to their dreams, nor struck out along other paths. Gimlet-eyed social observation, the public and private absurdities of American life, dramatic irony, and enduring half-cracked love wend their way through each of these narratives, in Moore's characteristic style that is always tender, never sentimental and often heartbreakingly funny.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, March 2014: Here’s a reason Lorrie Moore is so beloved by her baby boomer brethren: she’s smart, she’s funny, her eye is even sharper than her tongue. In Bark, her latest collection of stories, all those qualities are well on display. “He had never been involved with the mentally ill before,” she writes of her mid-life anti-hero in the (sort-of) title story, "Debarking." "[B]ut he now felt more than ever that there should be strong international laws against them being too good looking.” Acerbic? Check. Knowing? Check. Says out loud on the page what we less talented, less observant mere mortals wish we could form so well in thought? Check. Check. Check. The only reason not to read these seven stories is that, perhaps, they’re just too accurate and perceptive about the way we live now--but then, why would you ever want to read stories that were anything else? --Sara Nelson

About the Author

LORRIE MOORE, after serving for almost three decades as the Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been named the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Moore has received numerous grants and awards, from among others: the Lannan Foundation, the National Books Critics Circle, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0571273912
• ISBN 13: 9780571273911
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192