First Love and Other Sorrows

First Love and Other Sorrows PDF

Author: Harold Brodkey

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2013-06-18

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1480427977

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

These short stories filled with “narrative grace and rare craftsmanship” chronicle the loss of innocence and the anguish of young love (San Francisco Chronicle). First Love and Other Sorrows is the hauntingly beautiful debut collection of short stories from American master Harold Brodkey. Written when the author was in his twenties, these strong, affecting tales recall the intoxicating joy of young, springtime love, while lamenting the betrayal of dreams and false ideals in the glaring light of reality. Set in the Midwest during the 1950s, First Love and Other Sorrows centers around a Jewish family that has recently lost its patriarch—and with him the world of privilege. Through the eyes of a son, a sister, and a mother—each one struggling to find a foothold in both family and society—these stories explore class prejudice, obsessive love, and the tragic foibles and emotional truths of being human. First Love and Other Sorrows is masterful fiction from an extraordinary literary artist.

The Runaway Soul

The Runaway Soul PDF

Author: Harold Brodkey

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2013-06-18

Total Pages: 1290

ISBN-13: 1480427993

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

DIVDIVHarold Brodkey’s acclaimed novel is a mesmerizing work of literary genius, exploring the momentous events in the life of a family in twentieth-century St. Louis, and a writer still haunted by a childhood tragedy /divDIV First published in 1991, The Runaway Soul took Harold Brodkey more than three decades to complete. This sprawling novel has since been eagerly embraced by readers and critics alike, earning Brodkey the epithet of an “American Proust.” Told by Wiley Silenowicz, Brodkey’s fictional alter ego, the story snakes back and forth across the unforgettable events of a life. Following the traumatic death of his mother, Wiley recalls his troubling childhood in the care of his cousins: smooth-talking S. L. Silenowicz, his beautiful, emotionally deficient wife, Lila, and their abusive daughter, Nonie, who torments Wiley to no end./divDIV /divDIVIn language that soars and hypnotizes, The Runaway Soul fearlessly explores youth and adulthood, love and loss, sex and death, marriage and family, tracing upon one man’s odyssey through a troubling world. More than two decades after it first appeared in print, Harold Brodkey’s magnum opus remains one of the finest literary works produced by an American novelist in the twentieth century./div/div

This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death

This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death PDF

Author: Harold Brodkey

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2014-01-30

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0007401744

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A meditation on dying by a writer who has been compared to Proust, was much praised by Salman Rushdie and is perhaps most famous for producing very little.

Daddy

Daddy PDF

Author: Emma Cline

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2021-06-29

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0812988043

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From the bestselling author of The Girls comes a “brilliant” (The New York Times) story collection exploring the dark corners of human experience. “Daddy’s ten masterful, provocative stories confirm that Cline is a staggering talent.”—Esquire NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY An absentee father collects his son from boarding school after a shocking act of violence. A nanny to a celebrity family hides out in Laurel Canyon in the aftermath of a tabloid scandal. A young woman sells her underwear to strangers. A notorious guest arrives at a placid, not-quite rehab in the Southwest. In ten remarkable stories, Emma Cline portrays moments when the ordinary is disturbed, when daily life buckles, revealing the perversity and violence pulsing under the surface. She explores characters navigating the edge, the limits of themselves and those around them: power dynamics in families, in relationships, the distance between their true and false selves. They want connection, but what they provoke is often closer to self-sabotage. What are the costs of one’s choices? Of the moments when we act, or fail to act? These complexities are at the heart of Daddy, Emma Cline’s sharp-eyed illumination of the contrary impulses that animate our inner lives.

Sea Battles on Dry Land

Sea Battles on Dry Land PDF

Author: Harold Brodkey

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1999-04-15

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 0805060529

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Sea Battles on Dry Land gathers the best of Harold Brodkey's essays into a single volume. His "One of the Rules of Foppishness" explains, with deadpan precision, just what men and women are trying to communicate to each other by the way they dress. The previously unpublished "Notes on American Fascism" eerily anticipates the violence of latter-day militia groups. And Brodkey's profile of Frank O'Hara's Harvard years stands as one of the most eloquent portraits of a legendary American writer.

Stay Up With Me

Stay Up With Me PDF

Author: Tom Barbash

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-10-10

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1471128458

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

'Stay Up With Me belongs to the tradition of the classic American story and, like John Cheever, Barbash dramatizes the messy lives of New Yorkers' Independent on Sunday A newly single mother wrestles with the evidence of her son's love life during his Christmas vacation; an anxious husband persists in playing the host at his annual drinks party even though his marriage is in trouble and his wife mysteriously absent; a young man watches his widowed father become the toast of Manhattan's midlife dating scene while he struggles to find his own footing in life . . . The characters in Tom Barbash's acclaimed, Folio Prize-nominated collection explore the myriad ways we seek to connect with each other and the sometimes cruel world around us. In the classic tradition of John Cheever or Tobias Wolff, Barbash laces his narratives with sharp wit, psychological acuity and pathos, so that they pierce the heart and linger in the imagination. 'One of the most satisfying cover-to-cover short story collections I can remember' Dave Eggers 'Tom Barbash's wise and bittersweet stories map the gulfs between us, and the unexpected connections. I tried to keep track of my favorite one, but it was always the story I'd just finished'David Mitchell 'Is there such a thing as the Great American Story Collection? Yes, and this is it' Justin Cronin

All My Puny Sorrows

All My Puny Sorrows PDF

Author: Miriam Toews

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1635574986

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From the bestselling author of Women Talking, a "wrenchingly honest, darkly funny novel" (Entertainment Weekly). Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close-raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart while facing a profound question: what do you do for a loved one who truly wants to die? All My Puny Sorrows is a deeply personal story that is as much comedy as it is tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.