Spangled Ruin

by Holly Morse

Overview

A small town postal worker knows more than the young woman at her counter, including what they share; a Chinese American boy draws on fantasy ponies to outmaneuver menace; and an outsider artist teaches an urban lover the benefits of a fish’s perspective. In these stories – sexy, funny, tragic, cosmic -- Holly Morse unfurls the rainbow range of her narrative and stylistic talents. While the stories span both familiar themes (intergenerational conflict, sexual politics) and unfamiliar themes (Swedish witches, guinea pigs), they always deliver fresh data on the interplay between interiority and human relatedness. Many of them pass Peter Taylor’s test for the perfect short story: that it include all the elements of a novel in miniature. In the end, they achieve what the best of the genre achieves in the work of its masters from Flannery O’Connor and Alice Munro to TC Boyle and Rebecca Lee: that the whole, real world is implied within a tight, imaginary garden.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780991327287
Publisher:	Holly Morse
Publication date:	03/08/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	164
File size:	841 KB

About the Author

Holly Morse is an artist and writer. With her husband Michael Lipson, PhD, she is writing I Say Hello, an epistolary collaboration that explores love, loss and the nature of time. Morse is a graduate of The California Institute of the Arts MFA program. She lives with her family in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

"I absolutely love these stories, insightful, gentle, and also searing. It takes courage to write about the most tender aspects of human life, and talent to do so well, and luckily for us Holly Morse has both courage and talent to burn. Read Spangled Ruin and it will stay with you - and you will be grateful that it does." - Robin Black, author of If I Loved You I Would Tell You This and Life Drawing

"With inventive language and dry-as-a-bone wit, Morse presents a flotilla of unforgettable characters in unexpected situations (an inebriated bookseller on the rebound, a real estate visit that ends in the ER...) in a wildly original collection that celebrates-and augurs-the violent possibility of our American lives." - Courtney Maum, author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You and Touch

"Spangled Ruin is an absorbing collection of stories that explores episodes in the lives of exceptionally intriguing characters. It is a compellingly rambunctious read, impossible to put down." - Colin Harrington, The Berkshire Eagle

From the Publisher