Unravished
-
- $24.99
-
- $24.99
Publisher Description
In this haunting new collection of stories from award-winning writer Hester Kaplan, the past has a way of showing up when it is least welcome. In the title story “Unravished,” a woman reconsiders her marriage to a man bent on destroying a world famous landscape. In “The School of Politics,” a bored museum director struggles to understand her youthful affair with a corrupt politician. The fastidious preservationist in “The Aerialist” makes an emergency appointment to see the dentist who gave him advice on love years before. When two prickly private school colleagues in “This Is Your Last Swim,” find they are the only people left on campus in the days before the world’s end, they urgently and uncharacteristically come clean with their old secrets and shames. Masterfully written and emotionally packed, these stories seduce and startle, and remind us of the shifting ways we choose to narrate our own lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this collection of short stories, Kaplan (The Tell) masterfully constructs eight unrelated worlds while refusing to adhere to any one thematic or stylistic consistency. She creates sympathy for characters that might otherwise be judged as gold diggers, adulterers, perverts, and Lolitas. The title story is a portrait of a dying man, his much younger (but loving) wife, and the distorted ways they behave in order to distract themselves from the inevitable. In "Companion Animal," Kaplan explores the relationship between a lonely man and his new neighbor, a beautiful teenage girl, who is all too eager to come over to his house for a visit. "The Aerialist" concerns a man's tender love for his girlfriend's son and the strange competition he feels with the boy's ever-present, sloppy father. Kaplan is capable no matter the subject, whether it's divorce or the end of the world. Each story stands on its own and will spur the reader onto the next.
