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Category: Science Fiction/Alternate History
Description: In her luminous, long-awaited debut collection, award-winning novelist Maureen F. 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.
eBook Publisher: Small Beer Press, 2005 2005
eBookwise Release Date: September 2005

8 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [364 KB]
Words: 90757
Reading time: 259-363 min.

"McHugh's stories are hauntingly beautiful."--Booklist

"The 13 stories in McHugh's debut collection offer poignant and sometimes heartwrenching explorations of personal relationships and their transformative power.... McHugh (Nekropolis) relates her stories as slices of ordinary life whose simplicity masks an emotional intensity more often found in poetry. The universality of these tales should break them out to the wider audience they deserve."--Publishers Weekly

"My favorite thing about her is the wry, uncanny tenderness of her stories. She has the astonishing ability to put her finger on the sweet spot right between comedy and tragedy, that pinpoint that makes you catch your breath. You're not sure whether to laugh out loud or cry, and you end up doing both at once."--Dan Chaon, Among the Missing

"When I first read China Mountain Zhang many years ago, Maureen McHugh instantly became, as she has remained, one of my favorite writers. This collection is a welcome reminder of her power--they are resonant, wise, generous, sharp, transporting, and deeply, deeply moving. McHugh is enormously gifted; each of these stories is a gift."--Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club

"Wonderfully unpredictable stories, from the very funny to the very grim, by one of our best and bravest imaginative writers."--Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes

"Enchanting, funny and fierce by turns--a wonderful collection!"--Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace