You are Always Safe with Me
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In this powerful love story that takes place on a Turkish sailing vessel, Lily, a professor at a Florida college, finds herself required to be the companion of her newly widowed mother as they take a cruise along the Turkish coastline on a small sailing ketch. Expecting to endure, though not enjoy, this trip among her mother’s friends, Lily instead finds herself falling in love with Izak, the charismatic Turkish captain of the boat, a man whose powers of kindness, strength and tenderness touch Lily in a way that awaken longings in her she had given up long ago. Lilly’s infatuation with Izak surprises her and at first she resists her feelings, knowing that it would be nearly impossible for an American college professor and a Turkish sailor to find a meeting place to join their lives. However, one day while the others are on a trip away from the boat taking a tour to see the sights, Lily finds herself alone with Izak and their passion reveals itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reading this strong debut collection of 16 very short stories and one long novella is like browsing through an album of stark black-and-white photographs. Thematically linked by the joblessness referred to in the title and by the fact that the main characters define who they are by what they do, the tales depict a middle-class world in which every disruption of routine causes a sea-change in character. The loss of their canoe in ``Fishing Trips'' leads two men to choose to live in the wild; the novella ``Glass'' shows a painter's life turned upside down when he loses his apartment and his sponsor; a divorced chemical plant employee enters a world of violence and hallucinations in the brief, haunting ``A History of Amnesia,'' which reads like part of a lost Don DeLillo novel. Most of these pieces are word pictures rather than stories; plot, mood and character take second place to a bare-bones presentation of speech and action, as in ``Lesson,'' ``President'' and ``Floodlight.'' Mulcahy's voice, whether first- or third-person, is sharp and precise; the narratives proceed in blocks of sentences like quick, hard-hitting punches, creating a whole that is much more disturbing than its disparate parts. ( Aug. )
