Problems with People
Stories
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars—an extraordinary collection of short stories spanning across America, Nepal, South Africa, and Germany that explores the mysteries of love and our complex desire for connection.
“First-rate.... Humorous, ironic, and satiric.... Each story is realistic, bordering on surrealistic.” —The Boston Globe
These stories showcase Guterson’s gifts for psychological nuance, emotional suspense, and evocation of the natural world. In these pages, we meet, among others, a lonely landlord trying to reach out to his tenants; a middle-aged widower looking for love online; an American Jew traveling to Berlin to confront his haunted past. Celebrating the surprises that lurk within the dramas of our daily lives, Problems with People marks the return of a contemporary American master to the form that launched his literary career.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
People struggle to connect with each other in this succinct but ambitious collection of 10 stories from the author of Snow Falling on Cedars. Some return to Guterson's customary Pacific Northwestern milieu, but elsewhere he ranges abroad, with settings including Katmandu, Berlin, and South Africa. "Paradise" observes a man and a woman struggling through the awkwardness of their first few dates, while in "Tenant," a landlord obsesses over a new renter whom he has never met. "Politics" explores the superficial yet fraught relationship between a beggar and those he solicits, and "Krassavitseh" follows a father and son as they navigate Holocaust memorials in Germany with an enigmatic tour guide. Though Guterson's characters differ in their ages, locations, and worries, all of their stories turn on the thin lines that separate friendship from acquaintance, and the strange from the familiar. While the stories lack depth, they gain resonance from Guterson's eagerness to remind us of the boundless potential of everyday encounters.
