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Cover image of Airs of Providence
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Airs of Providence

Jean McGarry

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Providence—a city named in the hope that a direct compliment to God might place Him under some sort of obligation to its inhabitants—provides Jean McGarry with the fertile ground of her comic and gritty, harsh and touching cycle of stories. Weaving in and out of Airs of Providence is a novella telling the story of April and Margery Flanaghan, two sisters trying to grow up in this neighborhood and doing only a so-so job of it. And it is a job, in a world not clearly made for anyone, but better suited to an older generation. Surrounded by nuns and priests, uncles and aunts, biddies and oddballs...

Providence—a city named in the hope that a direct compliment to God might place Him under some sort of obligation to its inhabitants—provides Jean McGarry with the fertile ground of her comic and gritty, harsh and touching cycle of stories. Weaving in and out of Airs of Providence is a novella telling the story of April and Margery Flanaghan, two sisters trying to grow up in this neighborhood and doing only a so-so job of it. And it is a job, in a world not clearly made for anyone, but better suited to an older generation. Surrounded by nuns and priests, uncles and aunts, biddies and oddballs, April and Margery do their best to be normal. They practice their penmanship, babysit, go to a prom, and try to be up to date. But how even to look normal in a world where you are always running up against uncontrollable mood swings, mysterious infirmities, unexplained sorrows?

Over a period of thirty-five years, they sniff out neighborhood scandals, get an "earful" of what the others are up to, and rest secure behind their sets of double curtains in the knowledge that everything human and frail is on the outside, everything blameless and perfect on the inside. If the Airs of Providence are sometimes rough, they are always funny. They may be sad too, but it is a dry-eyed melancholy that is no relation—or perhaps just a poor relation—to the air of "Danny Boy."

Reviews

Reviews

Praise for Jean McGarry: McGarry keenly depicts both working-class and privileged cultures with deft, comic, and devastatingly precise portraits.

Jean McGarry's fictions invite you into their rooms as though you were a welcome and sympathetic relation... they trust language. They construct characters... They try, in Joseph Conrad's words, to make us see.

McGarry's thickly layered prose, with its stunning emotional accuracies, is always just on the verge of exploding into dream or fantasy, or, as in The Very Rich Hours, into delusions.

A gifted observer, records with fidelity the daily minutiae of life and introspection.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
144
ISBN
9780801863677
Table of Contents

1. Providence, 1954: Watch
Penmanship
2. Providence, 1956: Toy Box
Stayed Back
3. Providence, 1934: The House at the Beach
They Meet a Boy
4. Providence, 1970: Behind This Soft Eclipse
The Hospital: Seeing

1. Providence, 1954: Watch
Penmanship
2. Providence, 1956: Toy Box
Stayed Back
3. Providence, 1934: The House at the Beach
They Meet a Boy
4. Providence, 1970: Behind This Soft Eclipse
The Hospital: Seeing Him There Almost Dead
5. Providence, 1957: An Accident
The Babysitter
6. Providence, 1948: The Most Complimentary Thing
Margery's Prom
7. Providence, 1960: Cavities
One of Them Gets Married
8. Providence, 1966: Ducks and Lucks

Author Bio
Jean McGarry
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Jean McGarry

Jean McGarry teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Ocean State is her eighth book of fiction. Dream Date, Gallagher’s Travels, Home at Last, The Very Rich Hours, and Airs of Providence have also been published by Johns Hopkins. Her short stories have appeared in, among other publications, The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Boulevard, and The Southwest Review.