We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories - Softcover

King, Owen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582345880 ISBN 13: 9781582345888

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2006

Synopsis

"An exceptional debut...Funny and poignant, these stories are textured gems."―People (four-star critic's pick)

The stories in this collection, along with Owen King's brilliant title novella set in Maine after the 2000 election, carry the weight of real emotion and revelation and showcase the impressive versatility of a rising talent.

An adolescent encounters a giant reptile in the unlikeliest of places, a rundown shopping mall; a baseball player in a fantastic 1930s Coney Island is assailed by the guilt of an illicit romance; a nineteenth-century itinerant dentist finds himself snowed in with a group of trappers for a long evening of primitive surgery and laughing gas reveries. The stories in this collection, along with King's brilliant title novella set in Maine after the 2000 election, carry the weight of real emotion and revelation and showcase the impressive versatility of a rising talent.

About this title

About the Author:

Owen King grew up in Bangor, Maine. He is a graduate of Vassar College and holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and his stories have appeared in Book Magazine and the Bellingham Review. He currently resides in Brooklyn.

From Publishers Weekly:

From the 26-year-old scion of literary giant Stephen King comes a compelling, imaginative debut collection of four short stories both creepy and heartfelt, plus a compassionate novella about a 15-year-old son of a single mother. Set in Maine around the 2000 election, the title novella captures the teenage narrator's anger over his mother's impending marriage to Dr. Vic, while his family, led by a union organizer grandfather, seethes over Bush's election. George lays siege to his mother's relationship and helps his grandfather build a sniper's nest from which to attack the paperboy who defaces the old man's "Al Gore is the Real President" sign. Freaks and weirdos—external symptoms of his protagonists' inner struggles—people King's shorter stories, which strive to balance the lurid with a reach for emotional truth. In "Wonders," about a baseball player who takes his pregnant girlfriend to a Coney Island circus freak abortionist, the macabre and the heartfelt feel discordant, and the story ends with unearned violence. But in "Frozen Animals," King achieves a surreal blend of gory, vivid description of unanesthetized dental surgery layered with the drug-addicted dentist's intermittent memories of a happier past. This original collection heralds the arrival of the next generation.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1582345880
• ISBN 13: 9781582345888
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 242