Purchase
Random House Trade Paperbacks
June 2005
On Sale: June 14, 2005
288 pages
ISBN: 0812971876
EAN: 9780812971873
Paperback
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
From an acclaimed and award-winning young writer comes an intensely moving debut collection set in the eye of lifeβs storms. In Corpus Christi, Texasβa town often hit by hurricanesβ parents, children, and lovers come together and fall apart, bonded and battered by memories of loss that they feel as acutely as physical pain. A car accident joins strangers linked by an intimate knowledge of madness. A teenage boy remembers his fatherβs act of sudden and self-righteous violence. A βhurricane partyβ reunites a couple whom tragedy parted. And, in an unforgettable three-story cycle, an illness sets in profound relief a manβs relationship with his mother and the odd, shifting fidelity of truth to love. Told in fresh, lyrical voices and taut, inventive styles, these narratives explore the complex volatility of love and intimacy, sorrow and renewalβand expose how often these experiences feel like the opposite of themselves. From the woman whose young sonβs uncanny rapport with snakes illuminates her own missed opportunities to the man confronting his wife and her lover in a house full of illegal exotic birds, all the characters here face moments of profound decision and recognition in which no choice is clearly or completely right. Writing with tough humor, deep humanity, and a keen eye for the natural environment, Bret Anthony Johnston creates a world where where cataclysmic events cut people loose from their βregular lives, floating and spiraling away from where we had been the day before.β Corpus Christi is a extraordinarily ambitious debut. It marks the arrival of an important, exquisitely talented voice to American fiction.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - September 15, 2008
| 
© 2003-2026