Synopsis
"Home" is the unnamed goal in this exquisite new collection whose characters are somehow always searching for that ideal state of calm and warmth and perfect tolerance. Of course, that dream is quite unlike the hard world of Providence, where these dreamers really live - a world of wary neighbors and vague priests, of flinty teachers, of parents distant and irascible. Hungering for some better place, these sons and daughters of New England follow very different paths, and make very different - often shattering - discoveries.
In "The Raft," a ten-year-old-boy struggles with the shock of his father's leap from a ninth-floor window of the failed family business. A middle-aged woman invites her widowed mother to move in with her and then the two of them must fight it out to see which one has made the greater "sacrifice." A high school senior, more interested in boys than in fruit flies, uses her genetics project - "Sex-Linked Traits" - to probe the foibles of her own high-strung family. In "Uncle Maggot," a little girl, unwilling to say goodbye at her father's coffin, shocks the mourners with a very odd performance.
Charged with dark humor and dramatic power, the stories in Home at Last are crafted with that rare stylistic purity which readers have come to expect from an author whose work the New York Times has praised as "deft, comic, and devastatingly precise."
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Jean McGarry teaches in the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University.
Reviews
The author of two previous story collections, Airs of Providence and The Very Rich Hours , and the novel The Courage of Girls , Jean McGarry returns to tired, gray Providence and its people for Home at Last , her third collection. Unfortunately, the stories read as if the author is tired, too. Or maybe she's been away a while and is apprehensive about her return home. The stories lack action and immediacy of plot, forgoing the book's never-ending litany of dull homecomings and quick funerals. Family members drop dead in nearly every story. In ``Odds,'' the narrator's father suffers a heart attack, while her favorite uncle dies ``suddenly and painfully,'' but there is no reaction depicted, no remorse. Emotions aren't muted in these stories; they're skirted. The author lets her characters dwell in the safe reveries of their pasts, leaving the reader to make sense of what little happens in the present. Nearly everyone in Home at Last is like Uncle Jack (``Mr. & Mrs. Bull''): ``What he had to work to forget . . . was not mistakes or the business failure--it was home.'' Returning home is the recurring theme of this collection of stories, but most often by the time we get there we find what we feared all along--we're ready to leave again.
Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
In this collection of 12 short stories, McGarry writes subtly and masterfully of people coping with realistic predicaments in their lives. The tales deal with emotions in a way that is authentic rather than sentimental. In "Poor Richard," an acne-plagued teenage girl works for an eccentric pharmacist who fails to keep his business afloat. While the man is kind to her, she feels little allegiance or compassion toward him. "Mr. and Mrs. Bull" describes an adolescent girl's relationship with her Uncle Jack out on the farm. The end of the story implies a somewhat inappropriate feeling on the part of the uncle toward the girl, but nothing comes of it. "The Calling" features a beatnik couple who receive a call that the woman's younger brother has died. She reflects on their relationship in a way that is oddly detached. While some of the stories are more compelling than others, the collection as a whole is solid. For general readers.
Kimberly G. Allen, MCI Corporate Information Resources Ctr., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Search results for Home at Last (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)
Stock Image
Home at Last (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction) (Signed)
Published by
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994
ISBN 10: 0801848520
ISBN 13: 9780801848520
Used
Hardcover
Signed
Seller: Sequitur Books, Boonsboro, MD, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Like New. [Association copy, inscribed by Jean McGarry on title page.] Hardcover and dust jacket. Good binding and cover. Minor shelf wear. Owner's name on front end page, else unmarked. *Autographed by author.* "Jean McGarry is the author of nine books of fiction, among them the novel The Courage of Girls (Rutgers University Press) and the short story collection Dream Date (JHU Press). Her 2006 novel, A Bad and Stupid Girl (University of Michigan Press), received the University of Michigan Fiction Prize. Her most recent book, No Harm Done, a collection of stories, was published in 2017 by Dalkey Archive Press. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Boulevard, The Southwest Review, and others. She previously served as co-chair of the department. She is a graduate of the Baltimore-Washington Psychoanalytic Institute." - Johns Hopkins. Signed. Seller Inventory # 2101220017
Stock Image
Home at Last
Published by
The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, 1994
ISBN 10: 0801848520
ISBN 13: 9780801848520
Used
Hardcover
Signed
Seller: Willis Monie-Books, ABAA, Cooperstown, NY, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. Inscribed by the author (signed with first name) on the title page. DJ is in a mylar cover. ; 9.25 X 6.25 X 1.75 inches. Seller Inventory # 229123