November Storm (Iowa Short Fiction Award) - Softcover

Oldshue, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1609384512 ISBN 13: 9781609384517

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2016

Synopsis

In each of the stories in Robert Oldshue’s debut collection, the characters want to be decent but find that hard to define.

In the first story, an elderly couple is told that delivery of their Thanksgiving dinner has been canceled due to an impending blizzard. Unwilling to have guests but nothing to serve them, they make a run to the grocery, hoping to get there and back before the snow, but crash their car into the last of their neighbors. In “The Receiving Line,” a male prostitute tricks a closeted suburban schoolteacher only to learn that the trick is on him. In “The Woman On The Road,” a twelve-year-old girl negotiates the competing demands of her faith and her family as she is bat mitzvahed in the feminist ferment of the 1980s. The lessons she learns are the lessons learned by a ten-year-old boy in “Fergus B. Fergus,” after which, in “Summer Friend,” two women and one man renegotiate their sixty-year intimacy when sadly, but inevitably, one of them gets ill. “The Home Of The Holy Assumption” offers a benediction. A quadriplegic goes missing at a nursing home. Was she assumed? In the process of finding out, all are reminded that caring for others, however imperfectly—even laughably—is the only shot at assumption we have.

In upstate New York, a November storm is one that comes early in the season. If it catches people off-guard, it can change them in the ways Oldshue’s characters are changed by different but equally surprising storms.

About this title

About the Author

When he isn’t writing, Robert Oldshue practices family medicine at a community health center in Boston. He holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and his work has appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, the Gettysburg Review, and New England Review. He is married and has two children. 

Review

"Oldshue's debut collection, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, finds consistent success in its depictions of intimate relationships. Oldshue's sturdy prose and potent, understated endings will satisfy fans of the classic short story."--starred review, Publishers Weekly

"Oldshue writes a loose, relaxed prose, that of an unhurried natural storyteller with a wry affection for many of his characters and a wide range of human interest."--starred review, Kirkus Reviews

"Oldshue, who is a practicing physician in Boston and an instructor at Harvard, has produced an impressive set of stories filled with distinct, vivid characters....With each subsequent story read, I found myself thinking that the most recent story was my new favorite....It is exceptional work, which I commend to you."

-- Rob Cline, Cedar Rapids Gazette

"Accessible stories that many will enjoy." - Library Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1609384512
• ISBN 13: 9781609384517
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 140