This Jealous Earth
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- €3.49
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- €3.49
Publisher Description
"Engaging...charmingly nostalgic." — Publishers Weekly
“Incredibly moving…Carpenter’s writing is clear and delightful.” — A.K. Mayhew, The Rumpus
A man puts his beloved pets to the knife; a family prepares for the Rapture; a woman in a department store slips a necklace into her purse. Whatever the situation, the characters in This Jealous Earth: Stories find themselves faced with moments of decision that will forever alter the course of their lives. Always moving and often touched with humor, Carpenter’s stories examine the tension between the everyday and the transcendent—our struggle to grasp what lies beyond our reach. Whether hawking body parts in a Midwestern city, orbiting through the galleries of a Paris museum or plotting sibling tortures in an Arizona desert, his characters lead us through a series of dilemmas of universal appeal.
This Jealous Earth: Stories is the debut publication from MG Press, a Midwest based publisher.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 16 tales that form Carpenter's agreeable debut collection thread together the familiar and the bizarre, and while not every story hits its intended mark, the volume offers enough surprise to remain engaging throughout. The coming-of-age "Donny Donny," full of petty theft, x-ray specs, and dangerous neighbors, is charmingly nostalgic, while the meta-fictional correspondence between a man and a utility company's customer service representative, in "Sincerely Yours," adds humor and absurdity. Overall, Carpenter achieves the greatest success in two stories concerning animals. "The Tender Knife" finds a man facing sadness and terror while culling his koi pond. And in "Field Notes," a vacationing boy collects scorpions as his parents' marriage crumbles. Carpenter sprinkles the collection with several flash fiction compositions, and these concise bursts of prose, particularly "The Phrasebook" and "Future Perfect," spark interest. Still, some longer narratives disappoint. The title story collapses under a saccharine finale, and the semi-ghost yarn "The Spirit of the Dog," about a missing canine and a series of disappearances at a mining site, overextends its welcome.
