Patrick OKeeffe0.0 Born and raised on a dairy farm in rural County Limerick, Ireland, Patrick O?Keeffe has penned an accomplished debut with "The Hill Road," unveiling the precarious balance of family intimacies played out in the timeless and cloistered world of the Irish farm country. O?Keeffe's four linked novellas span time and generations, and each brims with gorgeous, thoughtful prose and enduring characters. Love and secrets, unfulfilled dreams and missed opportunities, fear, greed, and compromised moral decisions all leave their mark here. A dairy farmer unknowingly falls in love with the younger sister of a woman he once cruelly jilted. A young man recalls his spinster aunt and the tragic story of her life's great love?a soldier who returned alive but altered by the Great War.
A richly rewarding work that will resonate with fans of William Trevor and Alice Munro, "The Hill Road" heralds the arrival of an important new voice.
Jim Harrison0.0 "Jim Harrison's new book, The Summer He Didn't Die, is a collection of novellas showcasing the flair that has made him a contemporary master of the form, and a celebration of love, the senses, and family, no matter how untraditional." The Summer He Didn't Die exults with life and all its magic. In the title novella, Brown Dog, a hapless Michigan Indian loved by Harrison's readers, is trying to parent his two step-children and take care of his family's health on meager resources - it helps a bit that his charms are irresistible to the new dentist in town. Republican Wives is a witty satire on the sexual neuroses of the Right, the mystery of why any person desires another, and the irrational power of love that, when thwarted, can turn so easily into an urge to murder. Tracking is a meditation on Harrison's fascination with place, telling his own familiar mythology through the places he has seen and the intellectual loves he has known in a vivid stream of consciousness that transfigures how we look at our own surroundings.
Maureen F. McHugh0.0 In her luminous, long-awaited debut collection, award-winning novelist McHugh wryly and delicately examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations:
—A woman introduces her new lover to her late brother.
—A teenager is interviewed about her peer group’s attitudes toward sex and baby boomers.
—A missing stepson sets a marriage on edge.
—Anthropologists visiting an isolated outpost mission are threatened by nomadic raiders.
McHugh’s characters—her Alzheimers-afflicted parents or her smart and rebellious teenagers—are always recognizable: stubborn, human, and heartbreakingly real. The trade paperback has bonus added material for book clubs and reading groups, including an interview with the author, book club questions and suggestions, and a reprint of Maureen’s fabulous essay, “The Evil Stepmother.”
