Honeydew
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- € 3,99
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- € 3,99
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'Prepare to be dazzled. Edith Pearlman's latest, elating work confirms her place as one of the great modern short-story writers' Sunday Times
'A genius of the short story' Guardian
'A moreish treat from a master of the form' New Statesman
'This majestic new collection is cause for celebration' Scotsman
'A fortifying pleasure to read' Financial Times
'One of the most essential short-story visionaries of our time' New York Times
Over the last few decades, Edith Pearlman has staked her claim as one of the great short-story writers.
The stories in Honeydew are unmistakably by Pearlman; whole lives in ten pages. They are minutely observant of people, of their foibles and failings, but also of their moments of kindness and truth. Whether the characters are Somalian women who've suffered circumcision, a special child with pentachromatic vision or a staid professor of Latin unsettled by a random invitation to lecture on the mystery of life and death, Pearlman knows each of them intimately and reveals them with generosity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following Binocular Vision, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Pearlman offers this affecting collection that periscopes into small lives, expanding them with stunning subtlety. The title story is a perfect case in point, a snapshot of a private girls' school in Massachusetts, where Alice, the respectable headmistress, has become pregnant by Richard, the father of Emily, a troubled but brilliant 11th grader. In this story, as in others, the relationships of the characters reflect the "nature of people to defy their own best interests." In "Puck," also set in a small Massachusetts town, antique store owner Rennie, "known for discretion and restraint," is drawn to Ophelia, a customer who confesses to a love affair. Rennie breaks "cardinal rule one" and advises Ophelia to pursue another customer. Rennie's heart opens wider in the moving "Assisted Living," in which she lets the elderly Muffy help out at the antique store, and then is required to dispose of Muffy's treasures as a series of accidents leads to an inevitable decline. Other gems include the magical "Dream Children," in which nanny Willa and the father of her ailing charge discover the depth of their connections to the child, and the sensual "Tenderfoot," in which widow and "expert listener" Paige and newly single Bobby whose wife left him after he refused to stop to help out at a car accident connect over their shared fate as "survivors now doomed to mourn until the end of their own days."
