The Red Convertible
Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008
By Louise Erdrich
(Harper, Hardcover, 9780061536076, 512pp.)
Publication Date: December 17, 2008
Categories: Short Stories (single author)
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This unique volume brings together for the first time three decades of short stories by one of the most innovative and exciting writers of our day. A master of the genre, Louise Erdrich has selected these pieces—thirty works that first appeared in magazines as well as six unpublished stories—from among a much larger oeuvre. She has ordered them chronologically but also by theme and voice.
Erdrich is a fearless and inventive writer. In her fictional world, the mystical can emerge from the everyday, the comic turn suddenly tragic, and violence and beauty inhabit a single emotional landscape. Each character in these stories is full of surprises, and the twists and leaps of Erdrich's imagination are made all the more meaningful by the deeper truth of human feeling that underlies them.
In "Saint Marie," the ardent longing that propels a fourteen-year-old Indian girl up the hill to the Sacred Heart Convent and into a life-and-death struggle with the diabolical Sister Leopolda fuels a story of breathtaking power and originality. "Knives" tells of a homely butcher's assistant, a devoted reader of love stories, who falls for a good-looking predator, a traveling salesman, with devastating consequences for each of them. "Le Mooz" evokes the stinging flames of passion in old age—"Margaret had exhausted three husbands, and Nanapush had outlived his six wives"—with unexpected humor that turns suddenly bittersweet at the story's close. A passion for music in "Naked Woman Playing Chopin" proves more powerful than any experience of carnal or spiritual love; indeed, when Agnes DeWitt removes her clothing to enter the music of a particular composer, she sweeps all before her and transcends mortality and time itself.
In The Red Convertible, readers can follow the evolution of narrative styles, the shifts and metamorphoses in Erdrich's fiction, over the past thirty years. These stories, spellbinding in their boldness and beauty, are a stunning literary achievement.
Louise Erdrich is the author of twelve novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her debut novel, Love Medicine, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent novel, The Plague of Doves, a New York Times bestseller, received the highest praise from Philip Roth, who wrote, "Louise Erdrich's imaginative freedom has reached its zenith—The Plague of Doves is her dazzling masterpiece." Louise Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.
"Compiled from 30 years of work, spanning an enormous variety of registers . . . The Red Convertible reveals Erdrich to be one of America's finest writers of short fiction."
-Dallas Morning News
"Erdrich's stories don't grow old. They grow more astonishing for how fresh they still feel. . . . You only have to read the first story . . . to get a whiff of authorial wizardry."
-Chicago Tribune
"Louise Erdrich is an immensely satisfying storyteller... She finds grace in action, using the gentlest of language."
-Los Angeles Times
"Erdrich's characters are unforgettable... Grade: A."
-Rocky Mountain News
"A wondrous short story writer.A master tuner of the taut emotions that keen between parent and child, man and woman, brother and sister, man and beast."
-New York Times Book Review
"Erdrich can sketch a novel's worth of character and incident in just a few pages."
-Entertainment Weekly
"Erdrich is one of our major writers...and this volume is a good demonstration of her compelling stylistic innovations, not to mention her literary cunning."
-Washington Post Book World
"A collection of brave and inventive stories..."
-Ms. magazine
"These tales, like the shining car in the title story, have a velocity all their own."
-O magazine
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Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Jamie Ford Random House |
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Miles from Nowhere Nami Mun Riverhead |
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American Buffalo Steven Rinella Spiegel & Grau |
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The Piano Teacher Janice Y. K. Lee Viking |
