WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
PEN/MALAMUD AWARD
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
THE STORY PRIZE FINALIST
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST
In this sumptuous offering, one of our premier storytellers provides a feast for fiction aficionados. Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these twenty-one vintage selected stories and thirteen scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers.
No matter the situation in which her characters find themselves―an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, a lifetime of memories unearthed by an elderly couple’s decision to shoplift, the deathbed secret of a young girl’s forbidden forest tryst with the tsar, the danger that befalls a wealthy couple’s child in a European inn of misfits―Edith Pearlman conveys their experience with wit and aplomb, with relentless but clear-eyed optimism, and with a supple prose that reminds us, sentence by sentence, page by page, of the gifts our greatest verbal innovators can bestow.
Binocular Vision reveals a true American original, a master of the story, showing us, with her classic sensibility and lasting artistry, the cruelties, the longings, and the rituals that connect human beings across space and time.
Binocular Vision, by Edith Pearlman; “Cautious words make the story convincing” I have been trying to fathom what it is about Edith Pearlman’s marvelous Binocular Vision (Lookout Books, January 2011) that makes this story collection such a treasure. That is why it was almost a relief to stumble upon the “cautious words” quote attributed to her and referenced in the title of this review. In truth, there doesn’t seem to be a single recklessly placed word in the 34 stories–13 of them previously unpublished–of this, her most recent collection.How then, I kept…
Like a fine pearl necklace I savored this story collection — reading one at a time, randomly, over the course of 18 months. Perlman’s writing is spectacular and her characters so human. I have only a couple of stories remaining to read and don’t know what I will do.One of Perlman’s lines from “The Story,” one of my favorites, seems to describe her own writing: “Whatever language she employed, the nouns were unadorned, the syntax plain, the vocabulary undemanding: not a word that couldnât be understood by children,…
Among the Greatest of Short Story Collections! I don’t know why I had never heard of Edith Pearlman! Her short stories are a masterful exploration of human nature, her nuanced characters are unforgettable and her writing sublime. It is a collection I will read multiple times.