News of the Spirit

By Lee Smith
(Ballantine Books, Paperback, 9780449002261, 304pp.)

Publication Date: August 25, 1998

Categories: Short Stories (single author), Literary

“Her best stories are guilty pleasures. . . . The title story is the most powerful of all. . . . Lyrical and moving.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“READING LEE SMITH IS LIKE COMING HOME AGAIN, TO FIND EVERYTHING AS YOU REMEMBERED.”
—The Washington Post

“These stories capture the flavor of the South. . . . With clever prose in ‘Blue Wedding,’ she is able to convey the poetic chatter of Southern voices that separates one class from another. . . . Complex characters and surprising plot twists appear in the captivating ‘Live Bottomless’ . . . . After ten novels and three collections, Smith has become a master at coupling tragedy and humor.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“LEE SMITH IS ONE OF THOSE AMERICAN WRITERS WHO TRULY MATTER. . . . SHE IS ONE OF THE GREAT STORYTELLERS OF OUR NATION, ONE OF THE GREAT ARTISTS.”
—PAT CONROY

“Smith’s watchful, bright . . . heroines read true: She has an unerring ear for the lyrical and the down-and-dirty. . . . Smith is terrific at creating fresh, evocative, and absolutely right voices in these stories. She can move between the breathless and innocent self-creation of the college student in ‘The Bubba Stories’ to the brittle self-delusion of the professional ‘fiancée’ in ‘The Southern Cross’ with sympathy and understanding.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“LIVELY . . . WISE AND WRY TALES.”
—The Seattle Times

“OUTSTANDING . . . MARVELOUS . . .UTTERLY ENJOYABLE . . .
One of the finest collections of short prose I’ve read since Bobbie Ann Mason first stunned readers with her Southern voice . . . Lee Smith is a writer’s writer, a teller of tales for tale tellers to admire and envy. She’s also a reader’s dream. She knows what she’s doing, and she does it very, very well.”
—Houston Chronicle

“Some of her best work . . . ‘Southern Cross’ and ‘News of the Spirit’ are magic. . . . This collection has the virtues of Smith’s other fine volumes, Cakewalk and Me and My Baby View the Eclipse. These stories . . . glitter with insight and a sharp personal vision.”
—Raleigh News & Observer

“A thoroughly enjoyable and moving reading experience.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Lee Smith has a great way of stepping aside as a writer and slipping into the skin of her characters. . . . [She] doesn’t so much write as tell stories—and darn good ones at that.”
—Jane

“Smith writes some of the most lucid, Southern-accented prose this side of Ellen Gilchrist.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Treat yourself to News of the Spirit. If you have read Lee Smith before, you will snatch this latest gem up happily. If you are a newcomer to Smith’s fiction, you are in an enviable position, for after you have read this collection of stories you will have a new world waiting for you in the form of several previously published, marvelous novels and short stories.”
—The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

“In prose that’s direct and simple, by turns bitterly funny and lyrical, Smith inhabits the voices of women young and old as they try to muddle through the chaos of their lives. . . . These five narratives are packed with period details and social observations that unobtrusively propel and add texture to the story lines. Such obsession with detail makes Smith’s heroines both distinctively Southern and universally feminine.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)