Дебора Айзенберг0.0 Since 1986 with the publication of her first story collection, Deborah Eisenberg has devoted herself to writing “exquisitely distilled stories” which “present an unusually distinctive portrait of contemporary American life” to quote the MacArthur Foundation. This one volume brings together Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997) and her most recent collection-Twilight of the Superheroes (2006).
“One of America’s finest writers.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Concentrated bursts of perfection.”—The Times (London) “Shimmering stories that possess the power and charm to move us.” —The New York Times “Exhilarating.”—Harper’s Magazine “Outstanding.”—Christian Science Monitor “Eisenberg simply writes like no one else.”—Elle “Eisenberg’s stories possess all the steely beauty of a knife wrapped in velvet.”—The Boston Globe “Dazzling.”—Time Out New York “Magic.”—Newsweek “Comic, elegant and pitch perfect.”—Vanity Fair “One of the great fiction writers living in America today.”—The Dallas Morning News “There aren’t many contemporary novels as shudderingly intimate and mordantly funny as Eisenberg’s best stories.”—The New York Times Book Review
Дженнифер Иган4.0 Дженнифер Иган — блестящая американская писательница и журналистка, давно и прочно завоевавшая любовь публики. Ее роман "Цитадель" стал национальным бестселлером, а книга "У времени бандитская рожа" принесла автору мировую известность и самую престижную литературную награду США — Пулитцеровскую премию.
Действие охватывает почти полстолетия, включая 20-е годы нынешнего века. Юность героев совпадает с зарождением панк-рока, и он навсегда входит в их жизнь, а для кого-то становится призванием. Сама книга построена как музыкальный альбом: две ее части так и называются — "Сторона А" и " Сторона Б", а у каждой из тринадцати самостоятельных глав, как у песен, своя тема. Успешный продюсер Бенни Салазар и его помощница Саша окружены целым созвездием ярких персонажей. Их судьбы сплетаются в единый сюжет, где есть любовь и музыка, слава и нищета, наркотики и измены. Жизнь щедра не ко всем, но каждый по-своему пытается противостоять времени и сохранить верность себе и своей мечте.
Eric Puchner0.0 Warren Ziller moved his family to Southern California in search of a charmed life, and to all appearances, he found it: a gated community not far from the beach, amid the affluent splendor of the 1980s. But the Zillers’ American dream is about to be rudely interrupted. Warren has squandered their savings on a bad real estate investment, which he conceals from his wife, Camille, who misreads his secrecy as a sign of an affair. Their children, Dustin, Lyle, and Jonas, have grown as distant as satellites, too busy with their own betrayals and rebellions to notice their parents’ distress. When tragedy strikes, the Zillers are forced to move to Warren’s abandoned housing development in the desert. In this comically bleak new home, each must reckon with what’s led them there and who’s to blame—and whether they can summon the forgiveness needed to hold the family together.
With penetrating insights into modern life and an uncanny eye for everyday absurdities, Eric Puchner delivers a wildly funny, heartbreaking, and thoroughly original portrait of an American family.
Брэд Уотсон0.0 In this, his first collection of stories since his celebrated, award-winning Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson relates the brutality of human experience with unique genius and tenderness, delving into the lives of ordinary characters stricken by loneliness, longing, frustration, and the lure of better worlds.
In harmonious prose, Watson writes about every kind of domestic discord. In “Vacuum,” three young brothers make trouble when they call on the seedy neighborhood doctor to cheer up their underappreciated mother. Originally published in The New Yorker, “Visitation” follows a down-and-out, divorced father as he spends a weekend with his son at a California motel. A husband shoots himself in the foot in “The Terrible Argument,” letting down not only his wife but his dog as well. In the masterful title novella, a freshly married, disastrously mismatched, and expectant young couple are visited by an unusual pair of inmates from a nearby insane asylum, who just might be—or might as well be—aliens from another planet.
Brad Watson writes with such an all-seeing, six-dimensional view of human hopes and inadequacies that his talent must come from another planet. With wry humor and otherworldly grace, he reminds us how alien we humans really are—to each other and to ourselves.
