From Amazon.com
The devil is in the details, as the old saying goes, and certainly the women who populate Charlotte Bacon's collection of short stories,
A Private State, would agree. The lives these women lead are not the stuff of epic tragedy--instead, the distance between spouses is measured in the disappearance of the family dog; the fate of a pregnancy is decided during a whale-watching expedition. There are no fiery emotional explosions, no grand epiphanies. Bacon limns subtle stories of women who move through the physical world in search of answers they can only find within themselves. Whether it is one character's attempt to anchor herself in a shared past with her sister following the death of their mother, or another's efforts to suspend her anxiety about the future by losing herself in the buoyancy of water as she swims laps, Bacon defines small moments that build eventually to a greater awareness, if not always a happy ending, for her quiet pilgrims.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
"Bacon's collection of finely wrought stories examines the human condition with rare power. Here is the debut of an author who can look at the state we're in with both a clear, cold eye and extreme warmth and tenderness. As understated as it is elegant, this collection gives us stories about love and luck, sorrow and safety - marriages fall apart, bargains are struck, people are lost as often as they are found. Whether set in Arizona or New Hampshire or Maryland, it is emotional territory charted here - a personal state of mind. Accomplished and complex, A Private State marks the arrival of a writer who will surely continue to chart new territory with honesty and grace." - Citation of the judges for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award; "A consistent, sure voice and recurring images (uncontrolled dogs, uncommunicative sisters, unhinged minds, unorthodox Thanksgivings) unite these II stories, which range more freely across geography than across thematic boundaries. Most are coming-of-age tales.... The loops of meaning coil from story to story, creating a memorable whole that transcends the sum of its parts." - Publishers Weekly
