Bright Shards of Someplace Else: Stories
ISBN: 9780820347769
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Georgia Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Short stories American;

Alienated people who can't get right in the world stand at the center of this pensive collection-winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. A teacher grapples with an accusation of murder in "Line of Questioning"; in "Out of the Mouths of Babes," a babysitter with a great deal to lose finds an unlikely ally in her young charge-but only temporarily. "The Chautauqua Sessions" paints an intricate portrait of a druggie son and his deeply resentful father, delving into the ways addiction can irreparably destroy trust and love. The settings are American-Massachusetts, Tennessee, a ranch in the middle of the country. Yet it is the fateful destination that unifies these characters: nearly all gaze uneasily in the direction of death, whether struggling to bury a horse in "Dead Horse Productions," or collecting a father's ashes in "Ornament and Crime," or managing a memorial video business in "Key Phrases." Bursts of insight illuminate these carefully crafted tales; McFawn somehow wrenches the deepest humanity out of even the most unlikable characters. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

MONICA McFAWN lives in Michigan and teaches writing at Grand Valley State University. Her fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Web Conjunctions, Missouri Review and others. She is also the author of a hybrid chapbook, "A Catalogue of Rare Movements" and her plays and screenplays have had readings in Chicago and New York.

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