I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like: New and Selected Stories

Description: I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like: New and Selected Stories Product Description "These new and selected stories testify to the fact that there are still fine short story writers out there, doing the hard job of serious literary production in our age of tweets and memes...Holland's language is challenging, elliptical, bristling with sensations and resounding with the interior lives of complicated, recognizable people." The New York Times Book Review In the twenty years since her first short story collection, The Spectacle of the Body, Noy Holland has become a singular presence in American writing. Her second and third collections, What Begins With Bird and Swim for the Little One First, secured her reputation as a writer who excels and excites, her prose described as unsettling and acutely wrought, rhythmic and lyrically condensed. Following the recent publication of Bird, her first novel, I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like is a gathering of stories, the majority of which have never before been published in book form. Set on two continents and ranging in length from a single page to a novella, these stories beguile and disrupt; they remind us of the reach of our compassion and of the dazzling possibilities of language. "I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like," from which the collection takes its title, is part love song, part fever dreama voice demanding the ecstatic. Holland's stories do not indulge in easy emotions, and they keep to the blessedly blurred frontier between poetry and prose. Review Praise for I Was Trying To Describe What It Feels Like: Longlisted for the Story PrizeWinner of the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Award in Literature These new and selected stories testify to the fact that there are still fine short story writers out there, doing the hard job of serious literary production in our age of tweets and memes...Holland's language is challenging, elliptical, bristling with sensations and resounding with the interior lives of complicated, recognizable people...There are distant echoes here of Ian McEwan's macabre, early work, Shirley Jackson's demonic families and even the apocalyptic landscapes of Cormac McCarthy. But Holland is a much different writer still, entangling her readers in experiencerich narratives about the various ways people try to love one another, live their lives in hard places and, with the best words they can manage, 'describe what it feels like.' New York Times Book Review None of the stories in the collection are formulaic, and none of them are easy. Rather, they're sneaky, enigmatic, revealing themselves to the reader at unexpected times, sometimes long after the last word has been read... I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like is a strong collection, and Holland's writing is by turns hallucinatory, bizarre, and maddening in the best possible way. NPR Over the past two decades, Noy Holland has been quietly publishing some of the finest short stories written in the English language . . . By turns earthy, reverent, poetic, and wry, these stories don't so much 'describe what it feels like' as make you feel what it feels likethe 'it' being what it is to be fully alive in the world. Oprah.com A treasure trove... Holland's prose makes the familiar seems strange and the strange seem familiar. ELLE There is always a visceral sense of something wild and untamable beneath the surface of Holland's stories, moving her characters through scenes and moving plots toward sharp conclusions. Booklist About the Author Noy Holland is the author of Bird: A Novel as well as three story collections, Swim for the Little One First, What Begins with Bird, and The Spectacle of the Body. Recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the MacDowell Colony and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, she teaches writing in the graduate program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Fast and Free Shipping You're already purchasing the item. Why pay additional for shipping, especially slow shipping? We get your order shipped out within 1-business day and delivered to your doorstep as quickly as possible. Competitive Pricing With our dynamic pricing model, our prices are always competitive. Our prices are some of the lowest that you will find on the internet. Rest assured that you're getting a good deal when purchasing with us. 30-day Money Back Guarantee We are committed to making sure that you leave this transaction satisfied. If you're unhappy with the product for any reason, you may return it back for your money-back or a replacement within 30 days. No questions asked!

Price: 9.98 USD

Location: Asheville, North Carolina

End Time: 2025-01-20T01:39:03.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD