Truthtelling
Author(s): Lynne Sharon Schwartz
SELECTED BY KIRKUS AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020.
With her new, dazzling collection of short fiction, Schwartz has propelled herself to the front rank of inventive short story writers such as George Saunders and David Means. Her characters are indefatigable New Yorkers whose daily lives are thwarted by a swerve of fate or a mishap or a time warp. A man lends his car to his ex-wife and is bewildered when she makes implausible excuses not to return it. A sophisticated high-end clothing store owner is taken in and manipulated by an ailing elderly neighbor who then leaves her all earthly possessions. A woman visits her ex-husband and his younger wife and realizes with a mixture of fascination and dismay how her former husband has been physically and psychologically debilitated by his new marriage. The characters from her early prize-winning novel,Rough Strife, reappear in middle-age, facing a life-threatening crisis. Schwartzs characters, presented with her impeccable style, reflect her many decades of accumulating wisdom and her sharp perspective. Contemplating the past, one of her characters muses, Memory is so prone to digression. To sustain a logical or chronological sequence, we must keep dragging our minds off their natural course, like a cowboy tugging on a calf with a rope around its neck who wants to run off into the fields. With this sort of nuanced thinking, Schwartzs fiction brings an original and piquant angle of intelligence to the matter of how to navigate our complex lives.
Review(s):
Agrab bag of realist and experimental stories, each one a treasure Wise, wry, and wittythese stories in all their stylistic variations are perfect.
The subject matter and themes seem just right for our alienated, absurdist times. Full of comic fantasy and controlled loony desperation, the storiesfrom two pages to two dozenputSchwartzs inventive talent on ample display.
The book is full of invention, soul, and wit, and also marks a departure from Schwartzs earlier fictional work, as it explores aspects of choice and behavior that verge on the fantastic and surreal.
Wry, tender, practically omniscient.
“Meticulously crafted This first-rate collection demonstrates why Schwartz remains an American literary treasure.”
Splendid short stories Word by word, Schwartz chooses her language with a surgeons precision. Her craftsmanship is a joy to behold.
There is a certain pleasure in coming late to the writing of such an accomplished and prolific author. A reader has plenty of time, these days, to work backward through her canon It doesnt take a global health crisis to learn to find solace in retreat, yet its difficult to read this as anything but prophetic.
The stories inTruthtellingoffer us an invitation to the unknown in ourselves and in the world.Turn to the impossible,they tell us,and explore it.As artists, as writers, as people living our lives. We cannot help but do so, after all, since the impossible is going to show up if were ready or not.
Each [story] has an almost other-worldly aspect to it as if the narrators are not quite grounded in reality. Somehow, despite when they were written, many of them hit home during these strange morose months of 2020.
Lynne Sharon Schwartz is a brilliant storyteller, andTruthtellingis filled with the kind of stories that will have readers thinkingand talkingabout them long after they put the book down. If you are a short story fan, this is one collection you should not miss.
ISBN:9781953002068
