Spangled Ruin

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.

Author: Holly Morse
Publisher: Tall Island Press
Published: 03/08/2017
Pages: 162
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.42lbs
Size: 7.99h x 5.24w x 0.37d
ISBN: 9780991327294

About the Author
Morse, Holly: - 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.