Rise: Stories

by L. Annette Binder

Overview

The stories in Rise are fairytales, except that the witch, lucky Hans, and the frog prince are characters at the fringes of everyday life. There are rockets, swells of starlings, and children who disappear into thin air. L. Annette Binder writes magical tales with authority and restraint, and we believe her stories, every one.

"The complex interweaving of themes, rendered through precise detail, is akin to a powerful subterranean disturbance that sends seismographs jumping but leaves few visible effects."
—Starred Review, Publishers Weekly

"L. Annette Binder’s Rise is a wondrous debut collection of her stories, any one of which could be an example of the form at its best."
—ForeWord Reviews, Selected as summer 2012 best book of debut fiction

"Binder has gone so deeply, and with such mystical brilliance and loyalty, into her own world that she has brought mine to me in high relief. She both casts a spell and breaks it. To experience Rise is to experience wonder."
—Laura Kasischke

"Three years ago I read a story titled 'Dead Languages.' I came out of my chair. I've been in standing ovation position reading every subsequent story written by L. Annette Binder. They came exquisitely one by one, and now you are damn lucky to have them all in one wondrous volume: Rise.
—Michelle Latiolais

“L. Annette Binder is a stunningly talented writer. Her stories are the stories of outsiders, gripping and heartfelt, heightened with hidden undertones of the surreal. It is this tension that makes the worlds she creates so vibrant, and allows her readers to see so deeply into these characters' souls. Rise is a beautiful book, and Binder’s words cut clear and straight to the bone.”
—Hannah Tinti

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936747313
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	08/07/2012
Series:	Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

L. Annette Binder was born in Germany and grew up in Colorado Springs. Her fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in One Story, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, Third Coast, Fairy Tale Review and others. Her story “Nephilim” will be included in The Pushcart Prize XXXVI. She has an A.B. from Harvard in Classics, an M.A. from Berkeley, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an M.F.A. from the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Foreword Laura Kasischke ix

Nephilim 3

Galatea 13

Nod 25

Wrecking Ball 35

Shelter 47

Tremble 61

Dead Languages 73

Rise 81

Halo 93

Sea of Tranquility 105

Weights and Measures 117

Mourning the Departed 127

Sidewinder 133

Lay My Head 145

The Author 157

Editorial Reviews

Whether the situations in Binder’s debut story collection (winner of the 2011 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction) are distortions of the plausible, such as the gigantic woman in “Nephilim” (which won a Pushcart Prize) who builds a long, bittersweet bond with a neighborhood boy who grows up doing odd jobs for her, or are rooted firmly in the everyday, such as “Tremble,” ostensibly about a disagreement between neighbors, the characters are enmeshed in a mingling of the spiritual and the nightmarish. Moments of epiphany are understated and rarely joyful: “His face was like a mirror, and it was better not to look” (from “Nephilim”); “He reached across the table and saw his reflection in the dark window glass, and he cried” (from “Mourning the Departed”). The complex interweaving of themes, rendered through precise detail, is akin to a powerful subterranean disturbance that sends seismographs jumping but leaves few visible effects. The subdued tone transcends the mundane, as in “Galatea,” in which the mother of a woman grieving her missing daughter says, “People didn’t go to the cemetery to visit the dead. They went to visit their memories.” The possibility of communication is fleeting but desired; as a visionary boy notes in “Halo,” “it’s good to have somebody who will listen even if they don’t understand.” (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"L. Annette Binder’s Rise is a wondrous debut collection of her stories, any one of which could be an example of the form at its best."
—ForeWord Reviews, Selected as summer 2012 best book of debut fiction

"The complex interweaving of themes, rendered through precise detail, is akin to a powerful subterranean disturbance that sends seismographs jumping but leaves few visible effects."
—Starred Review, Publishers Weekly

“In one of these amazing stories a character says to her husband, ‘Why are you smiling? You’re scaring me.’ That’s how I feel about Rise. There is a yearning so deep in each story, something beautiful and urgent, that the book glows. L. Annette Binder arrives with worlds of empathy and strange surprise.”
—Ron Carlson

"Three years ago I read a story titled 'Dead Languages.' I came out of my chair. I've been in standing ovation position reading every subsequent story written by L. Annette Binder. They came exquisitely one by one, and now you are damn lucky to have them all in one wondrous volume: Rise.
—Michelle Latiolais

“L. Annette Binder is a stunningly talented writer. Her stories are the stories of outsiders, gripping and heartfelt, heightened with hidden undertones of the surreal. It is this tension that makes the worlds she creates so vibrant, and allows her readers to see so deeply into these characters' souls. Rise is a beautiful book, and Binder’s words cut clear and straight to the bone.”
—Hannah Tinti

From the Publisher