A collection of the year's best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor.
Andrew Sean Greer, an exceptionally lovely writer, capable of mingling humor with sharp poignancy (Washington Post), selects twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.
From the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less comes Andrew Sean Greer's extraordinarily haunting love story The Confessions of Max Tivoli, told in the voice of a man who appears to age backwards.
A Today Show Book Club Pick
A Novel from the Pulitzer Prize-Winning author of LESS
A Today Show Summer Reads Pick
A Washington Post Book of the Year
Inspired, lyrical . . . Mr. Greer's considerable gifts as a storyteller ascend to the heights of masters like Marilynne Robinson and William Trevor. . . . [He] seamlessly choreographs an intricate narrative that speaks authentically to the longings and desires of his characters. --S. Kirk Walsh, The New York Times
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Less and Less is Lost
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells is a rapturously romantic story of a woman who finds herself transported to the other lives she might have lived.
After the death of her beloved twin brother and the abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy. Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918, 1941, and back to the present. Whisked from the gas-lit streets and horse-drawn carriages of the West Village to a martini-fueled lunch at the Oak Room, in these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well--though fearfully masking his true personality. And her former lover is now her devoted husband...but will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well? Greta Wells is fascinated by her alter egos: in 1941, she is a devoted mother; in 1918, she is a bohemian adulteress.
In this spellbinding novel by Andrew Sean Greer, each reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each extracts a different price. Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the unpredictability of love and the consequences of even her most carefully considered choices?
In the title story of this collection, neighborhood boys crouch in a backyard toolshed, and conspire to prove their piano teachers to be witches. In Cannibal Kings, a disillusioned young man accompanies a troubled boy on a tour of prep schools through the Pacific Northwest, only to realize that he has lost his way in life. And in Come Live With Me And Be My Love, a middle-aged gentleman looks back at his mannered early life as a Ivy Leaguer, married to a vivacious woman but silently yearning for his best friend -- and the sacrifices that each made to uphold their compromising bargain.
With a classic storyteller's gift for nuance and understanding, and a poet's grace for language, Andrew Sean Greer makes a remarkable debut with How It Was For Me.From the critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli comes The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, a rapturously romantic story of a woman who finds herself transported to the other lives she might have lived.
After the death of her beloved twin brother and the abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy. Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918, 1941, and back to the present. Whisked from the gas-lit streets and horse-drawn carriages of the West Village to a martini-fueled lunch at the Oak Room, in these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well--though fearfully masking his true personality. And her former lover is now her devoted husband...but will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well? Greta Wells is fascinated by her alter egos: in 1941, she is a devoted mother; in 1918, she is a bohemian adulteress.
In this spellbinding novel by Andrew Sean Greer, each reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each extracts a different price. Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the unpredictability of love and the consequences of even her most carefully considered choices?
A collection of the year's best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor.
Andrew Sean Greer, an exceptionally lovely writer, capable of mingling humor with sharp poignancy (Washington Post), selects twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.