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| Irish Girl
ISBN: 9781574413281
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of North Texas Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Fathers and sons;
You have to read closely so as not to miss significant clues in these tightly coiled stories by Katherine Anne Porter Prize-winner Johnston (Never So Green), who ventures deeply into the consciousness of Midwesterners to unearth old tensions and buried animosities. In "Water," he balances a marvelously multilayered plot involving a widowed mother of now grown twin boys ("one healthy, one not") who recognizes how her protectiveness of her sons-even if one commits a horrible crime-supersedes the ties she holds to her past. "Dirt Men" finds Buddy Jr., the son of a local excavating entrepreneur, returned home in disgrace from the Colorado college where he was teaching and trapped within the intersection of his past and his hubris when the dismembered body of a woman is found in an auto salvage lot. In "Things Go Missing," Johnston enters the mind of a young woman burglar whose seemingly senseless thefts (such as her shrink's autographed Michael Jordan poster) allows her to connect finally with someone, despite the pain she inflicts. These beautifully rendered tales deliver an emotional wallop. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Tim Johnston was born in Iowa City. He attended and graduated from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was the 2011 Jeny McKean Moore Writer -in Residence at the George Washington University. His stories have appeared in California Quarterly, Double Take, Best Life Magazine, The Iowa Review and Narrative Magazine. Irish Girl won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers. The collection won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. His other works include Two Years and Never So Green. In 2015 his title, Descent made The New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) |
