Now You See It . . .
Stories from Cokesville, PA
By Bathsheba Monk
(Picador, Paperback, 9780312426101, 240pp.)
Publication Date: November 27, 2007
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Hardcover
Categories: Short Stories (single author)
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A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year
Welcome to Cokesville, Pennsylvania. This is coal-and-steel country, the sort of place where an inch of soot on the windowsill means a regular paycheck--and two inches means a fat one. Where the only way to drown out the moaning of the cooling steel is to turn your radio up. And the best make-out spot in town is next to the burning slag heap. In seventeen captivating interlocking stories, Bathsheba Monk brings to life the fictional American town of Cokesville.
Bathsheba Monk was born to a family of Pennsylvania coal miners. After being discharged from the Army, she lived in Europe. She recently settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she is writing her second book.
"A sublime and deadpan debut that cocks an eyebrow and reminds us that it is never a light thing, this leaving home, though we all must try."--Esquire
"Bathsheba Monk is a writer I'll be talking about when I talk about brilliant new writers. Now You See It . . . is the work of an imaginative, funny, and electrically gifted storyteller."--Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried
"The stories use deadpan humor to combat a sense of hopelessness and economic futility."--The New Yorker
"A sassy, hard-boiled book of stories, some of which will break your heart . . . Monk's Cokesville stories convincingly span more than forty years of coal dust and hard living. . . . All of the stories are touching, some profoundly so."--The Buffalo News
"Inventive, unsentimental, Monk is a grassroots artist who honed her craft at the school of hard knocks. Her sense of place resonates in tune with her feisty sense of self."--The Boston Globe
"Monk is a terrific writer. . . . Like the soot in Cokesville, there is blackness to Monk's writing, but she is so funny that her fierceness sneaks up and smacks us from behind. . . . An important new voice in American fiction."--The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
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