- Hardcover: 201 pages
- Publisher: John F Blair Pub (July 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0895871408
- ISBN-13: 978-0895871404
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.5 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The undercurrents, both numinous and tragic, in the lives of grocery-store clerks, salesmen, janitors and other ordinary folk are revealed in this breathtaking second story collection (after A Dream of Old Leaves) from novelist Lott. Thanks to incisive, empathetic characterization and graceful prose, these 16 stories and one novella of often difficult situations?adultery, job loss, the death of a spouse?exude energy and wisdom. In "How to Get Home," Paul, a salesman, is in the hospital, felled by a mysterious, life-threatening illness. Lott vivifies the strange details of such an experience: how time loses its coherence as Paul sleeps away entire days and watches soap operas where "People lived lives, worked, made love, killed one another, all simultaneously"; how recovery can dislocate a life as surely as sickness. An edgy lyricism inhabits "Lights," in which a young woman, tired of arguing with her husband, becomes almost transcendently aware of all the lights that surround her, and of their healing effect. In the novella, "After Leston," Lott reprises Jewel Hilburn, the title character of his novel Jewel, as the Mississippi native makes a life for herself and her retarded daughter in Redondo Beach after the death of her husband. Lott writes intelligent, poignant stories that distill the beautiful and painful truths of the everyday.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
These stories, culled from everyday life experiences, are not dramatic. Rather, they portray our struggles to survive the quiet challenges of daily existence. Lott's (Reed Beach, LJ 9/1/93) unpretentious characters could be any of us: Paul's self-esteem suffers when he loses his job; Lee and Carol look at houses they cannot afford; Jewel makes sacrifices for her mentally handicapped daughter; a husband realizes the complexities of adultery; a family pet dies; a widower grieves; a salesman ponders the death of an associate, brutally killed "on the route"; and a father takes his soon-to-be-driving teenagers to the site of a fatal accident. These "down home" folks work through their lives with smiles, tears, hope and despair. Recommended for larger collections.?Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
4.0 out of 5 stars
Everyone should read Bret Lott, Jun 19 1997
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: How to Get Home: A Novella and Stories (Hardcover)
Many of these stories are so short and spare that you feel you may have missed something along the way. But they linger with you long after you've finished reading. They are about normal people much like ourselves, and they face problems and heartbreaks the same as ours. Mr. Lott is a masterful writer
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