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University of Pittsburgh Press
October 2001
On Sale: September 27, 2001
160 pages
ISBN: 0822941686
EAN: 9780822941682
Hardcover
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Women's Fiction
Destination Known Brett Ellen Block Winner of the 2001
Drue Heinz Literature Prize Selected by C. Michael Curtis
Imagine riding down an empty road filled with enough sharp
turns and switchbacks to make predicting the path ahead
impossible. Imagine night has fallen, clouds of fog swirl
across your windshield, and you're driving at maximum
speed. Imagine the road suddenly stops. . . . Now imagine reading Brett Ellen Block's debut collection
of short stories. Her fiction is taut and moody, fast-
paced yet self-reflective. Her characters are unusual or
unusually motivated, yet ordinary enough to be thoroughly
familiar. Her situations are breathless, set at either a
moment of awakening or at a time just before disaster
strikes. And her stories end shockingly soon, a split
second before the car smashes into the detour sign. Block, the winner of the 2001 Drue Heinz Literature Prize,
delivers twelve stories connected through images of cars
and through what is left unsaid. From Margaret, a
harmless, middle-aged woman who witnesses a hit-and-run
and then inexplicably chases down the perpetrator, to
Adrienne, who steals her boyfriend's car only to run out
of gas in the middle of the desert, Block does not bring
packages with neatly wrapped endings. Rather, her
characters seem driven-placed at meaningful points in
their lives even if they do not yet realize the potential
impact of these moments. There is Franklin, a retired box-maker, who must
discourage his landlord's son from entering the porno
business, Christine, who discovers her runaway niece while
driving an ice cream truck, and James, who decides to save
the life of a homeless man while stuck at a bus stop in
Newark. This collection of characters represents different
segments of our fractured culture. They could be people we
have known-members of our family even-whose actions we
cannot comprehend, or people we pass on the street each
day but do not take the time to notice. Block forces us to notice, to imagine what it is like to
live with an uncertain future. She forces us to pay
attention, even as we grip the steering wheel with white-
knuckled anticipation as we careen down the dark paths of
her creation.
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