Atomic Romance is a good novel. A really good novel, in many ways. Engaging and beautifully written and observed. But it's also missing something important.This is the story of Reed Futrell, a guy in his forties, divorced, with two grown children. He's got a mother who made a lifetime out of inde...
My personal favorite story in this collection is "Offerings," which originally appeared in The New Yorker in the 1980s. "Offerings" is not "flash" but it is very small for a traditional short story length, I am guessing maybe under 3000 words. I can't get over the story's magic, I keep re-reading...
In this remarkable book, the author of Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country, and other award-winning books gives us powerful new stories that capture the restless energy of life in contemporary America. The characters here are travelers and seekers, feeling their way toward, or away from the defi...
I think the only other thing I ever read by Bobbie Ann Mason is her short story "Shiloh." I am pretty sure I read the story while I was still in high school. I think it was in the thick anthology I won in a writing contest when I was in 10th or 11th grade. The story was about a relationship on th...
Without a woman around, he had turned into a slob, like Hot Mama’s erstwhile husband. If Julia were here, they could have something elegant and delicious at the Cavalcade, or Mr. Como’s—some mesquite-grilled salmon and some complicated salad that had a choice of fifteen dressings and its own fork...
IT ARRIVED IN A locked cubbyhole in the lobby. Mary sent photographs of a trip she had taken to the Olympic Peninsula, and Albert sent drawings of a landscape plan for revising Marshall’s backyard with ground covers. No one would have to mow! he explained. Loretta would have had a fit, Marshall t...
I look back at bursts of joy over daisy chains and bird feathers and butterflies and cats. These were the textures of bliss. And now I see how my eager heart must have demanded that such innocent raptures of childhood be repeated for the rest of my life, like playing a phonograph record over and ...
With its grassy splendor, the Lake District was an ideal place for a marital reconciliation, she thought. She hadn’t seen him in almost a year. He was flying from Boston to Manchester, then catching the train.In the ladies’ room at Booth’s, next to the station, she fussed over her hair and her ey...
He just wanted to try it, to see if it was right for him. Tiffany hadn’t taken him seriously when he had mentioned it before. “Don’t you like to try new things?” he asked her. He would try anything, except unconventional food. But she seemed more interested in redecorating her room than in revamp...
