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Reviews
[Painter's] latest stories, the ones that make up the opening section of her recently released Fabrications: New and Selected Stories (Johns Hopkins University Press), would in and of themselves constitute ample reason to buy and enjoy the book. But in fact, Fabrications draws from her entire career, giving us the finest stories from her four previous collections.
A great pleasure of Fabrications—and one of the most unusual aspects of the collection—is the variety of forms [used], from very short stories like "Dud"—in which a film editor creates a brilliant preview out of a terrible film—to much more expansive stories like "Her Elvis Presley Wedding.""
There are 31 stories in this collection, and I think each is a gem. Plunge headfirst into its pages and read right through or savor the stories slowly over time. There's a Painterly quality to it all. You've entered the house of a master, and you are safe in her hands
Few writers can generate as much tension in so few pages as Painter... Painter's art lies in how she so efficiently dramatizes how foolishly we 'exaggerate, lie, edit.'
Painter is too wise an artist to conclude that every fabrication, literary or not, must be damaging. Some are downright necessary. Painter's genius for subversion, for skewering her characters with their own self-serving lies and denials, is balanced by awareness of the vulnerabilities that can make reality so hard to bear.
Pamela Painter is a master storyteller—captivating, playful, hilarious, tender, perverse, Kafkaesque. Her craft is meticulous yet fluid. And her final sentences are zingers. A story makes a deft turn and comes to a profound stop.
Pamela Painter's stories abound with characters that linger, moments that enlighten. She is a master of the American short story and Fabrications is a triumphant book.
For the past forty-five years, Pamela Painter has written some of the finest short stories anywhere, and Fabrications is a treasure chest filled with her very best. Witty, moving, wise, and elegant, these stories are gems.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
5.5
x 8.5
Pages
328
ISBN
9781421438924
Table of Contents
New Stories
Her Elvis Presley Wedding
Brochure
A Fabricated Life
Off Stage
Doors
Blood-Red Moon
Hitchhikers
From Getting to Know the Weather (1985)
The Next Time I Meet Buddy Rich
Intruders of Sleepless
New Stories
Her Elvis Presley Wedding
Brochure
A Fabricated Life
Off Stage
Doors
Blood-Red Moon
Hitchhikers
From Getting to Know the Weather (1985)
The Next Time I Meet Buddy Rich
Intruders of Sleepless Nights
Something to Do
The Kidnappers
Getting to Know the Weather
From The Long and Short of It (1999)
Feeding the Piranha
Custody
New Family Car
The Real Story
The Bridge
The Second Night of a One-Night Stand
From Wouldn't You Like to Know: Very Short Stories (2010)
Appetites and Addictions
A View: Office at Night
Ice
Dud
Driver's Test
Put to Sleep
My Honey
From Ways to Spend the Night (2016)
Grief
Breathe
Reading in His Wake
Home Depot
Hindsight
Ways to Spend the Night
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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