The Out-of-Sorts
New and Selected Stories
West Virginia University Press
Vandalia Press
9781943665938
$24.99
Paperback
2017-11-01
2017-11-01
These stories are often set against large, significant events like the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Kent State shootings, but are always uniquely local. A mother fends off the police by brandishing copperhead snakes. A woman cares for the dog of an alleged double murderer. A husband who has lost his job works at trying to save his wife from a debilitating phobia.
This extensive collection by Gary Fincke, an accomplished poet and writer of fiction, gives rise to ordinary people living lives made fascinating by attention to the particulars of voice, place, and character. With precise language, surprising imagery, and sharp, evocative dialogue, these stories deepen beyond the oddities of their characters, who are scarred and defeated by circumstance and choice, but also attain moments of grace, compassion, and generosity of the spirit.
5.500in x 8.500in x 0.800in
Weight data not found for this book.
“Gary Fincke’s collected stories should reveal to thousands of readers what a few of us have known for a long time—he is a master of the form. These stories are ambitious and rigorous, and they aim for nothing less than an examination of what it means to be alive.”
Robert Boswell, author of Tumbledown and The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards
"An impressive testament to Gary Fincke’s mastery of the short story. The quality about his work that has always appealed to me is how quickly his stories engage and how tenaciously they maintain their hold on the reader. He knows his characters as well as any writer I've come across, and the result is fiction that bursts with life. I enjoyed every page."
Steve Yarbrough, author of Safe from the Neighbors
“There’s no glamour in Gary Fincke’s world, just tough times and hard work. From early on his people know how uncertain life can be—how easy it is to lose hope, and how, sometimes, to get by, we bury what we can’t face.”
Stewart O’Nan, author of Snow Angels and Last Night at the Lobster
"These stories read like a collective bildungsroman of a region, giving voice to those in the Rust Belt who feel displaced and forgotten."
Lawrence Coates, author of The Goodbye House and Camp Olvido
420 Pages
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