The Winter Without Milk: Stories

Jane Avrich explores the perils of desire in these fifteen brilliant stories. Here are characters irresistibly attracted to excess -- material, emotional, spiritual -- who must in the end choose between a life of self-indulgence and a life of self-control. The results are both disastrous and uplifting, and often wickedly funny.
Throughout The Winter Without Milk are reimagined characters from literature and history -- Oedipus, Lady Macbeth, Scheherezade, for example -- as well as everyday people who want more. Avrich's writing ranges from whimsical to cerebral. She pays homage to everyone from Kafka to Keats to Sophocles but is very much an original and a major new talent in contemporary fiction.

Author: Jane Avrich
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 06/12/2003
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780618251421

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2003 pg. 488
Booklist 05/15/2003 pg. 1642
New York Times 07/20/2003 pg. 16

About the Author
Avrich, Jane: - Jane Avrich's stories have appeared in Harper's Magazine, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Story, and other journals and have been nominated for The Best American Short Stories. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born and raised in New York, she received her bachelor's degree from Harvard and her master's from Columbia. A teacher for thirteen years, she teaches English at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn and lives in Manhattan.