Half an Inch of Water
Stories
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3.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A new collection of stories set in the West from "one of the most gifted and versatile of contemporary writers" (NPR)
Percival Everett's long-awaited new collection of stories, his first since 2004's Damned If I Do, finds him traversing the West with characteristic restlessness. A deaf Native American girl wanders off into the desert and is found untouched in a den of rattlesnakes. A young boy copes with the death of his sister by angling for an unnaturally large trout in the creek where she drowned. An old woman rides her horse into a mountain snowstorm and sees a long-dead beloved dog.
For the plainspoken men and women of these stories—fathers and daughters, sheriffs and veterinarians—small events trigger sudden shifts in which the ordinary becomes unfamiliar. A harmless comment about how to ride a horse changes the course of a relationship, a snakebite gives rise to hallucinations, and the hunt for a missing man reveals his uncanny resemblance to an actor. Half an Inch of Water tears through the fabric of the everyday to examine what lies beneath the surface of these lives. In the hands of master storyteller Everett, the act of questioning leads to vistas more strange and unsettling than could ever have been expected.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Everett's writing style is difficult to pin down, and his latest collection will provide readers with a new set of wonderful enigmas. Set in the snowy western U.S., the stories are stylistically mercurial equal parts zany and somber, highlighting Everett's masterly dexterity as a writer. The collection meditates on mystery, within relationships and in the natural world. In "Stonefly," one of the collection's strongest offerings, a boy goes after a nearly mythical king trout as a way to cope with the recent drowning death of his sister. "Finding Billy White Feather" and "Graham Greene" deal with futile searches for men that only exist in exaggerations and hearsay. "Liquid Glass" involves auto mechanics, a severed head, and the appearance of a giant lumbering ghost, all described amid mundane moments: "They shook hands, Donnie sat behind the wheel of the Silverado and Keasey sat in the passenger seat. They talked for a few minutes more and then rolled away." There's a constant sense while reading Everett that he's winking at his reader, welcoming them in on a joke that is not entirely clear. His stories, with their wide array of literary influences and referential nods, are imminently familiar yet somehow constantly surprising.
