The Half You Don't Know: Selected Stories [NOOK Book]

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Overview

Nineteen funny and moving stories about the compromises and intimate struggles of modern life
This collection of stories represents the best of Peter Cameron’s work from the 1980s, much of it first published in the New Yorker, the Kenyon Review, and the Yale Review. In these richly layered stories, sophisticated urbanites and lonely drifters alike face down the sad limitations to their dreams. Highlights include the O. Henry Award–winning stories “Excerpts from Swan Lake,” about...
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The Half You Don't Know: Selected Stories

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More About This Book

Overview

Nineteen funny and moving stories about the compromises and intimate struggles of modern life
This collection of stories represents the best of Peter Cameron’s work from the 1980s, much of it first published in the New Yorker, the Kenyon Review, and the Yale Review. In these richly layered stories, sophisticated urbanites and lonely drifters alike face down the sad limitations to their dreams. Highlights include the O. Henry Award–winning stories “Excerpts from Swan Lake,” about a young gay couple from New York coping with suburban suspicion, and “Homework,” about a boy yearning for the order of the classroom after  cutting school to deal with the death of his dog.
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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
These 19 stories by noted prose stylist Cameron (The Weekend, LJ 7/94) skillfully demonstrate the effect of the unknown on human relationships. Whether the situation is ironic (a woman sneaks into her ex-husband's swimming pool), poignant (a twin refuses to take off his sunglasses), or comical (one character is fired for getting a haircut), the reader is continually aware that something is withheld without necessarily learning what that is. Cameron effectively engages the reader in the dilemma presented by each story, but since all but two of these pieces have been published in the author's earlier collections (e.g., Far Flung Stories, LJ 9/15/91. o.p.), this selection is most appropriate for larger fiction collections lacking the previous volumes.-Joshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. System, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Michael Dorris
Peter Cameron has the rare ability to take an ordinary event and invest it with heart and significance.
—Los Angeles Times
Kirkus Reviews
It used to be that authors didn't gather what they considered to be the best of their short fiction together until the twilight of their career. Given the fact that Cameron is still relatively young and has published just two volumes of short fiction (One Way or Another, 1986, and Far-Flung, 1991), the need for a compilation (with the addition of two previously uncollected stories) seems decidedly unclear. The case isn't helped by the fact that these 19 stories, taken together, reveal a sameness of tone and a reliance on style over content. There's no question that Cameron is an elegant, precise stylist: His new novel, Andorra (p. 1482), exhibits a masterfully nuanced prose. In that work, and in some of the tales here, including "Homework" and "Slowly," there's considerable intense emotion as well. Overall, though, the work in Cameron's first two collections isn't varied enough, in its characters, dramatic intentions, or settings, to require this ambitious repackaging.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781453250365
  • Publisher: Open Road Publishing
  • Publication date: 3/27/2012
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 282
  • File size: 540 KB

Meet the Author

Peter Cameron
Peter Cameron (b. 1959) is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Born in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, he moved to New York City  after graduating college in 1982. Cameron began publishing stories in the New Yorker one year later. His numerous award-winning stories for that magazine led to the publication of his first book, One Way or Another (1986), which received a special citation for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a First Book of Fiction. He has since focused on writing novels, including Leap Year (1990) and The City of Your Final Destination (2002), which was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. Cameron lives in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

Peter Cameron (b. 1959) is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Born in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, he moved to New York City after graduating college in 1982. Cameron began publishing stories in the New Yorker one year later. His numerous award-winning stories for that magazine led to the publication of his first book, One Way or Another (1986), which received a special citation for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a First Book of Fiction. He has since focused on writing novels, including Leap Year (1990) and The City of Your Final Destination (2002), which was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. Cameron lives in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

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