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The Kind of Things Saints Do (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
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The Kind of Things Saints Do (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
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From Publishers Weekly
The seven stories of Valeri's energetic debut collection range far and wide in their examination of the ins and outs of love and affection. In the title story, teenage Susan acts out on her suppressed attraction for her best friend, Dana, through self-mutilation and a sexual encounter with a boy Dana likes. "Whatever He Did, He Did Enough" describes the troubles of a man who rescues and falls in love with a beautiful Cuban girl, only to watch her behavior shift alarmingly after he brings her home to Miami. "She's Anonymous" offers a different angle on love, as a divorced woman in her early 30s takes up dating again and finds herself wandering in and out of a troubling affair with a damaged younger man she meets on the Internet. Writing is the subject of "A Rafter in Miami," as a Cuban hairdresser tries unsuccessfully to fulfill her prose dreams after she starts dating a prominent Miami writer. The final story is the longest and the most developed: "Turn These Stones into Bread" focuses on a father and son as they try to reconcile their various grudges during a hiking trip. Valeri rarely relies on expository prose to push her plots along, instead using dialogue and inner monologue to generate forward movement. A couple of the stories are murky and unfocused, and occasionally her prose turns melodramatic as she develops the different conflicts. But there's plenty of lively writing, which bodes well for Valeri's future, especially if she continues to explore unconventional characters and plot lines.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From
Valeri rips through these pages with a fearless display of raw emotion. Whether she is writing from the point of view of a self-mutilating 17-year-old girl or a peripatetic twentysomething male, her stories are filled with urgency and pain. In "Turn These Stones into Bread," Valeri shows us the rage of an abandoned son and then turns around to reveal the suffering of the father who deserted him. No one is excluded from her compassionate, generous vision. This collection won the 2002 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
download eBook The Kind of Things Saints Do (Iowa Short Fiction Award) - Laura Valeri online free pdf mp3 torrent
download 0877458197 9781587294310 book online
Nelly Marco (CT) | 
10/03/2007
10/03/2007
The Kind of Things Saints Do is a guided tour through the bars and streets of South Florida, where heartbreak and melancholy meet heady tropical breezes and dazzling sunshine. The characters in this collection are conduits for the many sides of South Florida--cruel, indifferent, chaotic, self-absorbed, unknowable, spicy, seductive, passionate and wonderful. The relationships depicted here contain all of these characteristics, making these stories unfailingly faithful to their setting. Reading these stories, I felt as if I were really hearing the din of conversations in a Miami cafeteria, or studying the "melancholy features of mismanaged buildings on Hollywood Beach" or strolling the cafes and art galleries of Lincoln Road . . . Buy this book, it's cheaper than a plane ticket. Besides, you'll get to see the real South Florida, a thrilling peek way, way below the surface.
Barbara Bottner (los angeles) |
18/01/2007
18/01/2007
"This book of short stories was an emotional tour through different dysfunctional relationships: a teenage girl coming to terms with her father's abusiveness and her own complicated sexual desires; a young woman caught in a triangle between a former love, a new one, and a safe one; an angry man confronting his father about having left him and his mother... In each and every one, the main character acknowledges some kind of deeper need that is at the root of their destructive behavior, but in the end there is always a tone of hope and redemption, a way of "seeing" that leaves the reader feeling like the characters' secular experiences have a spiritual resonance. Growth comes wiht pain, but it's Valeri's ability to dance subtly between hurt and hope that make these stories special and profound. The characters feel real and the situations both familiar and new. You will come at the end of the book feeling like you know these people, have known them all your life, and you may find yourself thinking about them long after you put the book down."
Maryanne Stahl author of FORGIVE THE MOON an... (Thunderbolt, GA |
01/01/2007
01/01/2007
Valeri writes in lush yet precise sentences that vibrate with emotional honesty. Her willingness to explore even the darkest corners of the human psyche is matched prescient ability to understand--and accept--human behavior.
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