Binocular Vision - Softcover

Pearlman, Edith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908968508 ISBN 13: 9781908968500

Publisher: Pushkin Press, 2013

Synopsis

In this sumptuous offering, one of our premier storytellers provides a feast for fiction aficionados. Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these 21 vintage selected stories and 13 scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers.

No matter the situation in which her characters find themselves-an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, a lifetime of memories unearthed by an elderly couple's decision to shoplift, the deathbed secret of a young girl's forbidden forest tryst with the tsar, the danger that befalls a wealthy couple's child in a European inn of misfits-Edith Pearlman conveys their experience with wit and aplomb, with relentless but clear-eyed optimism, and with a supple prose that reminds us, sentence by sentence, page by page, of the gifts our greatest verbal innovators can bestow.

Binocular Vision reveals a true American original, a master of the story, showing us, with her classic sensibility and lasting artistry, the cruelties, the longings, and the rituals that connect human beings across space and time.

About this title

About the Author

Edith Pearlman, born in 1936, published her debut collection of stories in 1996, at age 60. Last year, she won The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Binocular Vision. She has published over 250 works of short fiction in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and online publications. Her work has won three O. Henry Prizes, the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature, and a Mary McCarthy Prize, among others. In 2011, Pearlman was the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, which puts her in the ranks of John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and other luminaries.

Review

[Pearlman's stories are] meticulously made, miraculously precise, and so fully populated that you marvel one mind could invent so many distinct human beings from scratch. -- Sam Leith Financial Times This book is a spectacular literary revelation -- Peter Kemp The Sunday Times An unsung master -- Megan Walsh The Times Her writing is intelligent, perceptive, funny, and quite beautiful... Maybe from now on everyone will know of Edith Pearlman. -- Roxana Robinson New York Times Book Review Among the best-kept secrets in US short fiction for decades... Make up for lost time now and catch up with Pearlman. -- Ben Felsenburg Metro Gold medal class ... seems beyond compare ... The traditional literary system has worked, though grievously slowly, in giving a genius of the short story her due. -- Mark Lawson Guardian The equal of Updike or Munro... This book will make your summer shine. -- Boyd Tonkin Independent These are stories to linger over. Daily Mail The literary discovery of 2013... lucid, witty, devastating... a masterclass on how to deliver literature's bittersweet blow in simply a few pages Sunday Telegraph No devotee of the short-story form will be unfamiliar with this quietly gifted American artist... She has written more great stories than one writer could expect, even during a 40-year career. Unfair? Life's like that -- Eileen Battersby Irish Times Edith Pearlman is the best short story writer in the world. A lot of people know that. More will -- Susan Hill The Times There remain a few dedicated practitioners of the short story, and Edith Pearlman is one to be cherished Wall Street Journal Edith Pearlman is a new literary It girl... a fortifying pleasure to read Financial Times One of America's great modern short-story writers Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award Finalist

Edition details

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908968508
• ISBN 13: 9781908968500
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 418