- Paperback: 232 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial Canada; 1 edition (Mar 15 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0006485723
- ISBN-13: 978-0006485728
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.2 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #230,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
From the author of the blockbuster Mister Sandman comes a gathering of unusual characters captured in the outrageous and humorous situations for which Barbara Gowdy has become famous. Teasing the taboos, Gowdy creates a marriage dialogue between a woman and her transsexual fiancé, who she thought was a man, and litigation between Samuel and Simon who share the same two-headed body. She peoples her stories with Siamese twins, a necrophile, and a pathetically lonely exhibitionist. And she brilliantly illustrates how uncomfortably close a connection comedy has to human suffering. The title story has been adapted into a movie called "Kissed.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
These eight short stories employ both satire and morbid humor to explore the lives of emotionally and physically abnormal characters. Among the protagonists: a pathetically goofy hyperactive child in foster care; Siamese twins equipped with two pairs of legs, two sets of female genitalia and one active libido; a little girl who creates chants to shrink the head of her hydrocephalic playmate; a young woman, unable to find satisfaction in her marriage, who poses nude in front of her living room window to excite the voyeur who lives across the way; and the two necrophiliacs of the title story, which takes its name from a Frank O'Hara poem. While their behavior is sometimes macabre, these people show extraordinary gutsiness, refusing to allow their abnormalities to diminish their capacities for life and love in whatever form it takes. Canadian novelist Gowdy ( Falling Angels ) writes with a bite that grants her characters earthy courage without allowing them to lapse into self-pity. Her daring high-wire act may not appeal to everyone, but her stories are not easily forgotten.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow!,
This review is from: We So Seldom Look on Love (Paperback)
I'm not surprised - I knew Gowdy was an artist when I picked up her novel "Falling Angels" by accident. This book of short stories is an incredible and dizzying fall into the world of the bizarre - where everything that is off-the-wall, quirky, and unacceptable, becomes normal, textured, and sprinkled with a bit of reality - though not to the point of being ho-hum. Oh, no! Barbara Gowdy will grab you by the neck and MAKE you admit it's a beautiful world, filled with odd, gorgeous people. I love this author - she is the only writer I've ever known who revels and celebrates the crazy shapes and colours of the human animal.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Every story is a gem!,
By A Customer
This review is from: We So Seldom Look on Love (Paperback)
I savored these stories--only one a night. They were fantastic. Every one is truly bizarre but truly commonplace at the same time. The characters--freaks and victims of perverse circumstance--are revealed in the end to possess a kind of mundane sensibility. The everydayness of these characters is just captivating.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars,
By A Customer
This review is from: We So Seldom Look on Love (Paperback)
Five Stars all the way
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