Because They Wanted To
Because They Wanted To

Author: Mary Gaitskill

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-03-13

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1439127972

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A collection of startling and breathtaking stories about people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know. A New York Times Notable Book A man tells a story to a woman sitting beside him on a plane, little suspecting what it reveals about his capacity for cruelty and contempt. A callow runaway girl is stranded in a strange city with another woman’s fractiously needy children. An uncomprehending father helplessly lashes out at the daughter he both loves and resents. In these raw, startling, and incandescently lovely stories, the author of Veronica yields twelve indelible portraits of people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know. Because They Wanted To is further evidence that Gaitskill is one of the fiercest, funniest, and most subversively compassionate writers at work today.

This Is Pleasure
This Is Pleasure

Author: Mary Gaitskill

Publisher: Pantheon

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 1524749141

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Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

Veronica
Veronica

Author: Mary Gaitskill

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2013-03-13

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0307833321

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A finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, here is an evocative novel about female friendship in the glittering 1980s. One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Alison and Veronica meet amid the nocturnal glamour of 1980s New York: One is a young model stumbling away from the wreck of her career, the other an eccentric middle-aged office temp. Over the next twenty years their friendship will encompass narcissism and tenderness, exploitation and self-sacrifice, love and mortality. Moving seamlessly from present and past, casting a fierce yet compassionate eye on two eras and their fixations, the result is a work of timeless depth and moral power.

Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song
Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song

Author: Kara Vernor

Publisher:

Published: 2016-06-03

Total Pages: 78

ISBN-13: 9780990903574

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The characters in this collection of 21 short fictions hum with restlessness. They pine for lost loves and pop music romances, Hollywood heartthrobs, and sunnier towns. They flee from failed relationships and looming violence, adulthood and other deaths. Written with dark humor and incisive, voice-driven prose, Kara Vernor's stories will stick in your head like a song.

The Other Americans
The Other Americans

Author: Laila Lalami

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2019-03-26

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1524747157

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***2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST*** Winner of the Arab American Book Award in Fiction Finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Fiction Finalist for the California Book Award Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize A Los Angeles Times bestseller Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dallas Morning News, The Guardian, Variety, and Kirkus Reviews Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself. As the characters—deeply divided by race, religion, and class—tell their stories, each in their own voice, connections among them emerge. Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love—messy and unpredictable—is born. Timely, riveting, and unforgettable, The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.

Why I Write
Why I Write

Author: George Orwell

Publisher: Renard Press Ltd

Published: 2021-01-01

Total Pages: 15

ISBN-13: 1913724263

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George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

Fire Color One
Fire Color One

Author: Jenny Valentine

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2017-01-31

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 0399546936

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A finalist for the prestigious Carnegie Medal, this novel is a stunning tribute to fathers and daughters, and to the unique power of art to connect and change us. Sixteen-year-old Iris itches constantly for the strike of a match. But when she’s caught setting one too many fires, she’s dragged away to London before she can get arrested. At least, that’s the story her mother tells. Soon Iris finds herself in the English countryside, where her millionaire father—a man she’s never met—lives. Though not for very much longer. Iris’s father is dying, and her self-interested mother is determined to claim his life’s fortune, including his priceless art collection. Forced to live with him as part of an exploitive scheme, Iris quickly realizes her father is far different from the man she’s been schooled to hate, and everything she thought she knew—about her father and herself—is suddenly unclear. But there may be hidden beauty in Iris’s uncertain past and hopeful future, if only she can see beyond the flames. Praise for Fire Color One: "It’s not often—in fact, it has never happened to me even once—that I fall so hard for a young arsonist. The book moves swiftly, alternating between comedy and sadness, sometimes in the same paragraph. I loved Fire Color One." —Daniel Wallace, critically acclaimed and bestselling author of Big Fish * "Valentine writes about family dysfunction, arson, and art with equal levels of beauty and lyricism, creating a vivid landscape of heartache and redemption....A story about an ugly situation that explodes into beauty through cunning and resilience." —Kirkus *STARRED* * "From the first page to the last, Valentine has crafted a masterpiece." —BCCB *STARRED* "[T]his is a poignant story about the power of art to connect and transform." —SLJ "Beautifully written...a quiet, reflective novel that blooms into a thrilling mystery." —Booklist "Fire Color One is a stunning journey of a teenage girl’s struggle to find her place in a world that tries its hardest to keep her out....For fans of stories in which the good guys prevail, this book is perfect." —VOYA "Wise, brilliantly plotted." —The Sunday Times "Beautifully written...this latest creation is her most spectacular yet." —The Guardian Children's Books review “A beautifully written, darkly funny and surprisingly poignant story of art, family and discovering the people we thought we knew.” —Kerry Kletter, critically acclaimed author of The First Time She Drowned Praise for Me, the Missing, and the Dead: A Morris Award finalist Winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize (under title Finding Violet Park) * “Compulsively readable. A memorable new voice.” —Publishers Weekly *STARRED* * “Lucas’ pitch-perfect voice and authentic family relationships...and the poignant, coming-of-age mystery will stay with the reader long after the book ends. Valentine’s debut novel shines richly.” —Booklist *STARRED* * “Engaging from start to finish.” —School Library Journal *STARRED* “An impressive debut. Valentine offers a rich cast of characters and marvelous writing.” —Buffalo News “Charmingly told, this mystery manages to be both frothy and nourishing.” —Kirkus

Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me

Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Publisher: One World

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 0679645985

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway

Author: Virginia Woolf

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2023-12-16

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13:

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Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.

Outline
Outline

Author: Rachel Cusk

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2015-01-13

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0374712360

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A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year. Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss. Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people's motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk's finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years.