Purchase
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
April 2014
On Sale: April 8, 2014
305 pages ISBN: 0374118582 EAN: 9780374118587 Kindle: B00FIL33P0 Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Fiction
A new collection of short stories from the woman Rick Moody
has called “the best prose stylist in America” Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of
“Bloomington” reads, “Now that I have been here for a little
while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here
before.” Or they may be lengthier investigations of the
havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to
routine: in “A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates,”
a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates
and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines
for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of
letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert’s
correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author’s own
dreams, or the dreams of friends. What does not vary throughout Can’t and Won’t, Lydia
Davis’s fifth collection of stories, is the power of her
finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry
or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis
writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the
quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the
alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable
patterns of daily life.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|