Win a copy of If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, by Robin Black
By Anne Stameshkin
Before I recommend or send any book to one of FWR’s reviewers, I always read a sample story or two, a chapter, or maybe the first fifteen pages. If I fall in love, I order a copy of the book for myself. But sometimes there’s a novel or collection that demands to be read immediately. If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (Random House, April 2010) made me forget I had a job, a website, friends, a boyfriend waiting for me to pick him up, dinner burning on the stove. And even after finishing this book (and sending it off to the reviewer), I couldn’t resist buying two more copies–one to keep and one to share as part of Short Story Month 2010: The Giveaway Project.
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This is Robin Black’s debut story collection and a recent Andrew’s Book Club pick. FWR will feature a review of the collection this summer. Jim Shepard describes Black’s stories as:
…beautifully measured and composed in their engagements with emotional crises that are harrowingly intense, if not catastrophic. Few first collections – few collections of any sort — are as intelligent and as moving about both the durability of love and the implacability of loss, or about the ways in which contingency can undo and remake us; about, finally, the damage done and the repair work to come.
I couldn’t agree more: this is one of the most exciting collections I’ve read in years. It’s rare to find a writer so gifted with both style and story, but Black is at once an inspired plotter, a master of character (and empathy), and a deft prose stylist.
To win a free copy of the book, comment on this post!
In your comment, tell FWR about a story collection you love (or one you’re looking forward to reading): on May 31, we’ll do a drawing of commenter names, and one lucky winner will receive a copy of If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This. To be eligible, your comment must include the name and author of a story collection. Feel free, if time permits, to tell us more about the book. We look forward to hearing from you!
And stay tuned for more story collection giveaways from FWR’s bloggers on May 17 and May 24.
If you write for another blog or lit site and would like to join the Short Story Month Giveaway Project, learn more here.
A couple of days ago, I finished reading Harold Brodkey’s posthumous collection, The World is the Home of Love and Death. The language was heady, his characters complex and just a little bit sinister. I was immersed in his world.
I did a review of it for Short Story Month 2010: http://silverfysh.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/marginalia-the-world-is-the-home-of-love-and-death-by-harold-brodkey/
I’ve only received detention once in my life: When I was caught reading The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway during my 7th grade A.P. English class. Detention meant coming to school an hour early (7am) and sitting in the library. So I read a few more of Papa’s stories that day. Easiest time I ever served.
As such, I’d like to nominate this story collection as one of my favorites. Not just for the wonderful irony of getting detention in A.P. English for reading Hemingway, but because these stories of his helped shape me as a writer-in-progress. Next on the list of early influences would include Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Wendell Berry–my earliest heroes.
When I was an MFA student, I read nearly only short stories and story collections. Among those I loved, and still love, were the ones that nearly all of my classmates loved (anything by Alice Munro, What It Was Like Seeing Chris by Deborah Eisenberg, Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin, Snow by Charles Baxter, Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx–before it was a movie…); the list truly goes on and on. There are also highly teachable stories that still manage to move me every time I read them with my students, such as The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Emperor of the Air by Ethan Canin.
But the collection that has surprised me the most is Jane Smiley’s The Age Of Grief, and because others may not have a teacher like Eileen Pollack to point them in the direction of this beautiful collection, I am nominating these stories.
The collection I most look forward to reading is Valerie Laken’s Separate Kingdoms.
With love for stories, their writers, and most especially their readers,
Peggy
In terms of contemporary short story collections, one of my all time favorites is Barry Hannah’s Airships. Though originally published in 1978, the writing in this book feels as sharp and new today as it did back then. Barry was a master of the sentence, of the unexpected line.
For a bit more on the man and his work, here is a short tribute we published on Fiction Writers Review after his death in March:
http://fictionwritersreview.com/essays/every-line-matters-in-memory-of-barry-hannah-1942-2010
My favorite short story collection is Finding a Girl in America by Andre Dubus. This was my first introduction to Dubus and, after having read Adultery and Other Choices as well as The Times Are Never So Bad, I still think that Finding is his best. I don’t often reread books, but I’ve read this collection more times than I can count if only to remind myself that beauty, regret, and sorrow can coexist in a single story.
My absolute favorite collection is Jenny and the Jaws of Life by Jincy Willett. It’s relatively lesser known than her novels but better, I think, and a cherished treasure. In it are stories with beautiful women, damaged relationships, and the absolute horror humanity is capable of juxtaposed with humanity’s ability to overcome the worst parts of itself. “Under the Bed” is my favorite of the collection and possibly of all short stories; she handles tragedy with delicate strength that you can only know when faced with it. I’ve become an ambassador of this collection, and can only hope to one day write something as moving.
Aimee Bender’s “Girl With the Flammable Skirt” has sat on my writing table since I first read it years ago. The stories are constantly surprising and shift my brain into another gear. She reaches places of deep emotion from an oddball premise (”my boyfriend is getting younger…”)–totally inspiring.
the Point by Charles D’Ambrosio. His first collection. Hard to find, sadly. But worth the effort
I’ll answer differently here than I did at Erika’s blog! You know, for variety. So, a collection I’ve long loved is Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies.
A recent favorite was a funny collection of generally quite short stories called If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home by John Jodzio.
I loved “A Few Short Notes about Tropical Butterflies” by John Murray. I am also a big fan of “Do the Windows Open?” by Julie Hecht.
How embarrassing – I made a slight mistake when I gave the title of John Murray’s wonderful collection. It is actually called, “A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies”.
I don’t know if anthologies count. If they do, I love several of the stories in the Best American Short Stories 2009 (by Alice Sebold and Heidi Pitlor). I also love Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
One short story collection I can’t wait to read? Robin Black’s. Thanks for hosting the giveaway!
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. Though it’s really just a convenient way for the publication of totally separate tales, most of which originally appeared in the New Yorker (and some of which do deal, however vaguely, with the Glass family), the arc it creates is beautiful and tragic – “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” to “Teddy.”
So many excellent collections are already mentioned here, so I will have to go with a favorite from a long time ago. As an east coast pre-teen, I felt like such a rebel reading Francesca Lia Block’s “Girl Goddess #9.” Though it doesn’t speak to me the same way now, I still recall it as one of the books that got me thrilled about writing.
oh this sounds like one for me to buy and read immediately!I take an Anne post like the above very seriously and I just went to Robin Black’s site and it is like” yes, yes, and yes. I loved (recently) Olive Kitteridge and I love Grace Paley and Deborah Eisenberg. Looking forward to this cupcake!
I’ve been mostly reading longer short stories/novellas recently. I enjoyed Michael Knight’s The Holiday Season, and right now I’m (re-)reading Ethan Canin’s The Palace Thief.
I’m so excited to read some of the short story collections mentioned in these posts. I really enjoyed Girl Trouble by Holly Goddard Jones. It’s a collection of fairly dark short stories about growing up female in the South. Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle also is an incredibly poignant and heartbreaking collection of short stories that touches on the interplay between people and nature.
A short story collection I recently read and loved was “The Secret Goldfish” by David Means. I also agree with Jenni above: Grace Paley and Deborah Eisenberg are both amazing. And I’m hoping to read this collection by Robin Black soon.