- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: WW Norton; 1st Edition edition (Mar 29 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393059081
- ISBN-13: 978-0393059083
- Product Dimensions: 21.5 x 14.8 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,858,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Big ideas come in lovely small packages in this collection by Silber (Lucky Us, etc.). Six elegantly connected stories explore, through first-person narratives, the conflicts and commonalities of love, faith and sex. A minor character in the first story becomes the narrator in the second, and so on, with each story building on its predecessor until they come full circle. Alice, a flighty American would-be dancer, struggles with her body and the difficult men in her life in "My Shape"; Duncan, an embittered gay dancer (and one-time teacher of Alice) describes embarrassment, heartbreak and the comforts of renunciation in "The High Road." In "Gaspara Stampa," the titular 16th-century Italian poet narrates her torturous love affairs and the art she makes of them; in "Ashes of Love," an ex-hippie and world traveler, whose capricious wife left him to raise their troubled son, later tries to balance his attentions between the boy and his new, younger lover. In the title story, a missionary's wife in turn-of-the-century China tells of learning to live in a foreign world and faces death during the Boxer Rebellion. Each of Silber's narrators reflects on his or her shifting fortunes with the calm wisdom of hindsight, without diminishing the power of immediate experience. Silber uses the device of interwoven narratives beautifully; these lengthy stories can stand alone, but the subtle connections and emotional resonances help create a satisfying structural unity. Silber's wise, compassionate chronicles of longing, devotion and the search for comfort, both spiritual and physical, will move readers to contemplation and delight.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Silber's new collection is indeed a "ring," as the subtitle suggests, but one so subtle and delicate in its construction that the connections seem to arise more from fortunate happenstance than deliberate design. The link between the end of the book and the beginning almost requires a re-reading of the first story. A poet mentioned in the second story becomes the subject of the third, and so on, with a pale thread of one story becoming bold colors in the next. The author writes successfully in many voices, women and men, gay and straight, present-day and historic. A matter-of-fact detachment toward affairs of the heart is contrasted with moments of uncontrollable passion. Death can come suddenly, violently, but all can be borne by Silber's sturdy characters. "Ideas of Heaven," a story of missionaries in late nineteenth-century China, shows a dedication to accuracy and research. Wonderfully evocative of time and place, this is a collection to be read and savored by all. Danise Hoover
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
I had my own ideas about a higher purpose, but not enough ideas. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
I had my own ideas about a higher purpose, but not enough ideas. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Crystalline prose,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ideas Of Heaven (Hardcover)
The stories in this collection each have moments where I nodded my head in complete sympathy and understanding of the character. The author's writes movingly and delicately of love and passion, and the after-effects of both.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Well Done,
By
This review is from: Ideas Of Heaven (Hardcover)
Joan Silber's Ideas of Heaven is really a terrific collection. Each of these first-person narrative stories is just wonderful, not a weak link in the bunch. Many times, I feel that a short story is a bit of an emotional letdown, but not in the case of these stories; each is emotionally rewarding. Never will you wish that a story was a little longer, or had a bit more for you. The writing here is excellent; the stories, compelling. Silber makes it a little bit more interesting by linking each story to the ones surrounding it as placed in the book. Well done. I highly recommend this collection, even if you generally shy away from short fiction.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An extraordinarily wise and gripping work of fiction,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ideas Of Heaven (Hardcover)
This "circle of stories" manages to capture more of human life than a dozen novels. I think it's the depths of the characterization. Like Alice Munro, Joan Silber makes you feel that you know these people better than anyone in real life, and sympathize with them, understand them, and care for them as if they were real.The characters and situations in one story resonate in another: a woman who longs to be a dancer -- without the equipment to go past a certain point -- is cruelly humilated by her teacher. But then, when we get to his story, we see how and why he has become the person who could do this. The book ranges across time and place, connecting through names, themes, story elements, and the ways the characters' erotic and spiritual longings intertwine. I finished the book a week ago and can't stop thinking about it. I thought it was one of the best works of fiction I'd ever read, both deep and dazzling. It hasn't faded for me at all; if anything, my admiration has grown. This makes me understand why readers want to follow a writer around and ask, "What do you eat for breakfast? How many hours a day do you write? Do you do your first drafts on a computer or by hand? How many times did you rewrite these magical stories?" As if there were some formula whereby the writer could communicate to the reader her wisdom, her humor, her compassion. Here's a moment where we see a character angrily sinking into failure: "In the end I gave up the studio, gave up the whole idea of teaching. I got a job in an agency booking dancers for clubs. Go-go girls, in spangled underwear and little white boots. I was the man the girls talked to after they read the classified and came into the office, nervous and flushed or tough and scowling. I sent them to clubs in the outer boroughs, airless caves in the Bronx with speakers blaring disco and red lights on the catwalk. My temper was so bad that people did what I told them, which was the agency's idea of sterling job performance. I was a snarling jerk in those years. Contempt filled by every cell; I was that as a tick on contempt." Oddly enough, though there's nothing resembling advice in here, after reading this book, I feel as if I know more about how to live, how to be the person I wish I could be. Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading these again and have given copies to two friends already. I just wish I could read it again for the first time, for the shocks of discovery.
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