My First Suicide
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Ten connected stories about life in Poland that straddle the line between intimate revelation and drunken confession.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With his latest, Pilch (A Thousand Peaceful Cities) masterfully negotiates sentiment with a clear-eyed vision of his autobiographical narrator's shortcomings and disappointments, suggesting a Dubliners set in Krakow. Ten sections that walk a precarious line between short story and chapter chronicle the disappointments of the modern urban man. Many of them deal with thwarted plans, such as when Piotr, a moderately famous writer, recollects his first suicide attempt from a distance of 40 years. Balancing the innocent insight of his 12-year-old self with the awareness of the present, he recounts his decision to jump from his parents' apartment. In a later section, Piotr meets a moderately famous model. "When great love comes along," he notes after fumbling his come-on, "a person always thinks he has fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. But when a person has fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, he can have problems"; as this section and others demonstrate, the problems are often different from what one expects. When Piotr tells the model that he's working on a "collection of short stories of a different sort," she ridicules the notion. Pilch's readers will feel quite differently.