Music Through the Floor: Stories - Hardcover

Puchner, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743270460 ISBN 13: 9780743270465

Publisher: Scribner, 2005

Synopsis

A first collection by a Pushcart Prize-winning young writer includes "Children of God," in which a loner becomes a caretaker for two mentally challenged men; "Essay #3: Leda and the Swan," in which a lonely high school girl longs for love; and "Child's Play," in which a pack of boys wreaks havoc on Halloween night. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Erik Puchner's Music Through the Floor is a hauntingly beautiful collection of stories recounted by a diverse group of similarly alienated heroes and heroines. While the thinly veiled lesson at the end of each tale may remind some of childhood fables, Puchner's characters, whose struggles are remarkably genuine, are likeable enough to make this a welcome debut.

At times hilarious in his irony, Puchner also has a serious side that infuses many of these stories with an unexpected heaviness. Among the most memorable is "Children of God," a story about a seriously depressed young man who becomes the caretaker of two mentally retarded adults whose daily routine, while tragic, is also triumphant. "Mission" is the story of an ESL teacher whose need to please his students, and the immigrant community in which he lives, is so strong that it tows the line between heartbreaking and pathetic. In the end, a student's real heartbreak is so poignantly rendered that the teacher, and the reader, are left speechless.

Not all of Puchner's stories are created equal--some lack depth, and others can drag at times. Still, on the whole, Music Through the Floor is a mentally and emotionally rewarding read, and most will look forward to more from this talented newcomer. --Gisele Toueg

From the Inside Flap:

"No blurb can do justice to this book. It is riotously funny and smart and beautiful, as nuanced and unpredictable as real life. The stories are peopled with lonely human beings reaching for connection in cities where they are misunderstood. They are ten-year-old boys, teenaged girls, illegal immigrants, ESL teachers, Americans abroad-- yet somehow they are all us. This is the book you will keep by your bedside table, the one you will loan to friends and then feel compelled to steal back in the middle of the night. We are fortunate to have Puchner in our midst, his sharp vision trained upon our experience." -- Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Underwater

"This is the most auspicious debut of a short story collection that I have encountered in years. Eric Puchner is a master of the perfect phrase and the perfect detail, and his stories are exceptionally wide-ranging in subject and tone: they can be funny, scary, and deeply moving, while the writing is at all times smart and emotionally courageous. Writers like Eric Puchner are keeping the short story form alive, and if there is any justice left in the world, this book will be widely read and celebrated." -- Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love and Saul and Patsy

"The distance between childhood and adulthood, as Eric Puchner shows us, can be measured in light-years. Incandescent with language and humor, the stories in Music Through the Floor radiate enough intelligence, enough emotional gravity, to light our way. We depend on new writers to be sextants of the human condition. Eric Puchner, however, has positioned himself as a polestar." -- Adam Johnson, author of Emporium

"Eric Puchner is one of our great young storytellers, arriving with this beautiful collection, in which his varied, surprising characters are connected by a sense that we are foolish and we are lost, yet we are all in this together." --Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743270460
• ISBN 13: 9780743270465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224