Terrarium
New and Selected Stories
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Book Award
"Urgent, unnerving and tightly packed short fiction that covers enough ground for a library of novels." —The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
Valerie Trueblood's writing has been praised by The New York Times as "an exercise in literary restraint and extreme empathy." Selected here are stories from her previous collections—finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award—alongside her newest collection, which lends this book its name.
The new stories collected within Terrarium represent an exciting direction for the author: a condensing of narrative and, in some cases, a departure from it into another state of mind.
It's hard to describe any of Trueblood's stories as "typical." She does not write about people from a single class, or caste, or geographical area. She has not written a single story emblematic of her work. She does not write stories fantastical or eccentric. Ordinary life, her stories may be saying, is fantastical enough. She is more like Babel than Chekhov. In all her writing, it's clear that Trueblood believes that the short story can carry both the lightest and heaviest of loads. Terrarium highlights the achievement of simply living, the stories within often unresolved but in a state of continuation, expansion. Trueblood's stories aren't merely about their subjects, they're inside them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Selections from three previous collections, as well as 30 new stories (also headed "Terrarium") comprise this excellent volume from Trueblood. The arrangement itself shows Trueblood's shift to much shorter stories, particularly in the new selections. In "Phantom Father," young Michele's obsession with her mother's first husband, Alonzo, who committed suicide and whom Michele never met, shadows her well into adulthood. The strangeness of obsession and family dynamics also figure prominently in the newer stories "The Tamarins" and "Helen of Troy." In the longer stories, Trueblood's direct and emotional prose draws the reader in, while the recent shorter pieces have a punchy, declarative flavor. In "Sleepover," grandmother Angie, recently recovered from a heart attack, muses over decades as she chaperones a teenager's birthday party that gets out of control. Some of the same themes recur in the newer stories, "Aliens: Saving the Child" and "Two Birthdays." Across these 49 stories, Trueblood provides breadth, depth, and something even more a window into her evolution as a writer. The earlier stories bear resemblance to Alice Munro's, while the later are reminiscent of Lydia Davis's; but throughout, Trueblood projects her own unique voice.
