The Candles of Your Eyes And Thirteen Other Stories - Hardcover

Purdy, James

3.94

66 ratings by Goodreads

9781555840662: The Candles of Your Eyes And Thirteen Other Stories

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555840663 ISBN 13: 9781555840662

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

first paperback edition of Purdy's recent stories

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly:

This collection of 14 stories from the veteran author of Southern gothics has a delightful freshness and vitality. As usual, Purdy, a superb storyteller, builds from small intimacies. "Scrap of Paper" profiles an old woman who constantly fought with her former maid, yet signs a slip of paper absolving the woman of any wrongdoing. A child receives an heirloom watch from his father in "Short Papa" and is instructed never to let it out of his sight. Purdy's language is sparse and his stories compressed, focusing on the intensity of the moment. He has a seductive way of drawing the reader into even the most fantastical stories (such as "Mr. Evening," in which a young antique dealer is brought low by greed); we continue to believe in the characters and events. His best work deals with sexual and societal taboos. The title story probes the obsessive love of Soldier, a black man, for Beauty, a white teenager. In "Some of These Days," a homosexual who was imprisoned for beating up his lover haunts porno movie houses in search of the man he calls "his landlord." Purdy is the author of more than 20 books, including the recent In the Hollow of His Hand.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

A mysterious young man who disintegrates under the spell of an avaricious old lady's heirlooms; a romance between a "retired cannibal" and a Liberace-esque "songster"; and a violent orgy of pie-eating and fornication are among the topics of this remarkable collection. In Purdy's world a violent blood-letting is "like a gentle summer shower" and a domineering servant proclaims that "help like I can give is at a high bid today and scarcer than true love." Read alongside In the Hollow of His Hand ( LJ 9/1/86), these stories confirm Purdy's true gift for fiction; he uses the short story form to work out the themes of sexual obsession, ecstatic love, and fathomless disillusionment familiar from his novels, but with a brusque, at times cartoonlike execution. A hearty antidote to the Yuppie boredom of most contemporary short fiction. Rob Schmieder, Boston
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.