Download or read book In the Land of Dreamy Dreams written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, Ellen Gilchrist's acclaimed 1981 debut collection of short stories, introduced readers to a remarkable Southern voice which has sustained its power and influence through her more than 20 subsequent books. Gilchrist has a distinctive ear for language, and a deep understanding of her flawed, sometimes tragic characters. These fourteen stories, divided into three sections -- There's a Garden of Eden, Things Like the Truth, and Perils of the Nile -- are about mostly young, upper-class Southern women who are bored with the Junior League and having babies, and chafe against the restrictions of their sheltered lives. Talented and bright, but living in the shadow of men -- their husbands and fathers -- they resort to outrageous actions in pursuit of freer lives and uncompromised love, despite the consequences. This collection first introduced readers to some of Gilchrist's most beloved characters, such as Rhoda Manning and Nora Jane Whittington. PRAISE: "It's difficult to review a first book as good as this one without resorting to every known superlative cliché...Gilchrist is the real thing." —Washington Post “A sustained display of delicately and rhythmically modulated prose and an unsentimental dissection of raw sentiment. Her stories are perceptive, her manner is both stylish and idiomatic – a rare and potent combination.” —Times Literary Supplement “Witty, concise and wonderfully varied.” —Literary Review “Gilchrist possess a distinctive voice, and blends a sense of poignancy with an often outrageously Gothic humor.” —New York Times Book Review “Her prose is quick-witted and urbane and as gossipy as Vanity Fair. Quite simply there is no Southern writer quite like her.” —Raleigh News & Observer
Download or read book Falling Through Space written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2000 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enhanced with 15 new essays, this collection is the benchmark of an acclaimed writer's spunk and sense of place. Originally published in 1987, "Falling Through Space" provides a funny and intimate diary of a writer's self-discovery. 42 photos.
Download or read book Victory Over Japan written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1984, this collection of 14 short stories set in Arkansas and Mississippi went on to win that year’s National Book Award for fiction, confirming Ellen Gilchrist’s place as one of the preeminent literary talents of her generation. Victory Over Japan takes us into the lives of an unforgettable group of Southern women — beautiful, complicated, enchanting, and sometimes dangerous — in and out of bars, marriages, divorces, lovers' arms, and even earthquakes, in an attempt to find happiness, or at least some satisfaction. Throughout these stories, one hears echoes of Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty, but Ms. Gilchrist has her own unique literary voice, and it is outrageously funny, moving, tragic, and always appealing. PRAISE: “To say that Ellen Gilchrist can write is to say that Placido Domingo can sing. All you need to do is listen.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post “She is what they call a natural, writing with passion, authority and a noticeable lack of the self-consciousness that weighs down much of contemporary fiction.” —San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle “Ellen Gilchrist’s achievement is to create lives which refuse to be bound on the page by words and sentences . . . the writing is full of understanding that doesn’t advertise itself as perception or insight.” —London Daily Telegraph
Download or read book Acts of God written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human race. You have to love it and wish it well and not preach or think you have any reason to think you are better than anyone else. Amen. Good-bye. Peace . . . Master short story writer Ellen Gilchrist, winner of the National Book Award, returns with her first story collection in over eight years. In Acts of God, she has crafted ten different scenarios in which people dealing with forces beyond their control somehow manage to survive, persevere, and triumph, even if it is only a triumph of the will. For Marie James, a teenager from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the future changes when she joins a group of friends in their effort to find survivors among the debris left when a tornado destroys a neighboring town. For Philipa, a woman blessed with beauty and love and a life without care, the decision she makes to take control of her fate is perhaps the easiest she has ever made. As she writes to Charles, her husband and lifetime partner, “Nothing is of value except to have lived well and to die without pain.” For Eli Naylor, left orphaned by a flood, there comes an understanding that sometimes out of tragedy can come the greatest good, as he finds a life and a future in a most unexpected place. In one way or another, all of these people are fighters and believers, survivors who find the strength to go on when faced with the truth of their mortality, and they are given vivid life in these stories, told with Ellen Gilchrist’s clear-eyed optimism and salty sense of humor. As a critic in the Washington Post wrote in reviewing one of the author’s earlier works, “To say that Ellen Gilchrist can write is to say that Placido Domingo can sing. All you have to do is listen."
Download or read book Rhoda written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fiction collection, including two new stories, from the award-winning author: “Rhoda is a fully realized creation. And not one to be dismissed lightly.”—Entertainment Weekly From Ellen Gilchrist, a National Book Award winner and “national treasure” (The Washington Post), this volume includes twenty-three stories starring Rhoda Manning—“the shining manifestation of Gilchrist’s wry, intelligent, and passionate writing” (Kirkus Review). Follow Rhoda from age eight to age sixty, as she grows from a hot-tempered, impetuous child to a complex, confident adult. Even at a young age, Rhoda loves to get her way, boasting a unique spark that only shines brighter in an adulthood full of sex and excitement. From diet pills to multiple marriages to far-reaching travels and a writing career, Rhoda’s relentless hunger for adventure will delight all who accompany her on her journeys. “A winner…Rhoda is as real as anyone who has ever ‘lived’ in a book.”—Library Journal “Rhoda loves to shop, swear and get her own way; she has always been a vivid and indelible character.”—Publishers Weekly “One of the most engaging and surprisingly lovable characters in modern fiction.”—Robert Olen Butler
Download or read book Net of Jewels written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Home for the summer in Dunleith, Alabama, Rhoda Manning’s life appears at ease. But the headstrong, passionate 19-year-old refuses to settle for a comfortable, conventional existence. Yearning for a life of profundity, adventure, and beauty, Rhoda breaks from the seemingly secure world of her family to recklessly follow her dreams—but not without tragic and disturbing consequences. A failed marriage, shady abortion, an impulsive decision to sneak into a midnight meeting of the Klan, dates with her shrink, a deluge of booze, and a bout of repentance all seem to vie as the means to Rhoda's own liberation. Gilchrist unflinchingly takes us through the turbulence of Rhoda’s formative years, on an outrageous coming-of-age journey of a young white woman in the 1960’s South—digging through the bone to reveal the chill of human experience. PRAISE: “One of the lies we enjoy telling ourselves is that when we were young, we were crazy and wild. But hey, sensitive, too, and reflective, full of conscience, already evolving into the mature human beings we are now. Ellen Gilchrist`s novel, Net of Jewels, provides an uncomfortable reminder that, more likely, we were controlled by brute forces-our raw emotions and emerging libidos, our parents and our desperate need to fit in, whatever that meant where and when we grew up.” —Chicago Tribune “Ellen Gilchrist refracts life through a prism of precious gems, a net of jewels. Her fiction is always a kind of prose poem, a dance of seven veils. Like all of Gilchrist’s work, her latest novel dazzles and pulsates, and even in the few passages of below-normal sheen, Net of Jewels still qualifies as an almost imperceptibly flawed diamond.” —Los Angeles Times In her ninth book, which begins in the mid-50's, Ellen Gilchrist tracks a 19-year-old who drinks too much, marries too young, and is bored by her own children. The plucky Rhoda Manning has appeared in many of Gilchrist's short stories; in Net of Jewels she positively struts. ...She struggles to free herself from the constraints of upper-crust Southern society, yet insists on enjoying all its advantages. Interestingly, Gilchrist chooses not describe Rhoda's transformation into a ''better'' person ... ''If we could understand one thing entirely, we might understand it all.'' Rhoda philosophizes. ... An engaging novel [with] beauty and emotional horsepower. —Entertainment Weekly
Download or read book Ellen Gilchrist written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2001-12-05 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication of 1983's The Annunciation, Ellen Gilchrist established herself as a teller of charming, bittersweet tales of the modern South.
Download or read book Sarah Conley written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 1997-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sarah Conley, 57, a poor Southern girl who rose to be an editor on Time magazine, flies to the bedside of a dying childhood friend and runs into Jack, the friend's husband and Sarah's old flame. He still loves her, but is she the same Sarah?
Download or read book The Annunciation written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of Ellen Gilchrist’s novel is the incorrigible Amanda McCamey. Leaving a troubled past behind, she marries into New Orleans’ high society but finds the privileged world stifling and unsatisfying. Seeking a quieter, more meaningful life, she divorces and moves to the Ozarks where she translates poetry and surrounds herself with artists and intellectuals. Her friend Katie, a brilliant sculptor, brings out the wild child in Amanda, but it is Will, an intense young musician, who captivates her. What begins as a sexual tryst quickly becomes a grand and impossible passion that mirrors the life of the eighteenth-century French poet whose work Amanda is translating. But her new life is interrupted when her past comes back to haunt her. With beauty, humor, and luminescent prose, Gilchrist paints an evocative portrait of a woman finally coming into her own. Praise: "Gilchrist's accomplished first novel is absorbing, rich, and evocative as she explores the heart and mind of a woman who has the courage to risk traveling an unconventional path in an effort to find the way to herself." —Publishers Weekly "Women’s fiction par excellence … Amanda is in some ways a receptacle for current romantic clichés, but she is also a vivid character or dash and humor [who] has at last made her way to autonomy." —Harper's Magazine "A fast-paced, often funny and touching novel." —Library Journal "Both stylish and idiomatic—a rare and potent combination." —Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book The Age of Miracles written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her exuberantly funny, bittersweet collection, Ellen Gilchrist offers 16 stories that delve into the vibrant lives of her signature strong-willed women. Ranging from hilarity to despair—innocent children bewildered by their elders’ behavior, a writer living on Xanax, and a socialite seeking a health cure only to find romance instead of rest—Gilchrist’s high-spirited characters always tend to find themselves in outrageous situations. The beloved and feisty Rhoda Manning returns, fighting the lure of the bottle while relentlessly going after her dream of becoming a famous writer. And while the restraint of family and society continues to haunt Gilchrist’s characters, they prove fearless and deliciously carve their own chaotic paths toward survival. Set in Fayetteville, Arkansas and New Orleans, Louisiana, the tales are artfully fashioned, providing tastes of marvelously trouble-prone people at every stage of life. Packed with humor, sexuality, and ever true to human weakness, this collection is romantic and full of passion—a treat in which readers will happily indulge. PRAISE: “The Age of Miracles is Ellen Gilchrist’s best book yet. Its comedy, irony, sexuality, inwardness, and sadness, all of it undergirded by a brave and funny sensibility, convince me anew that her work is in the first rank of American fiction today.” —Willie Morris, Author of My Dog Skip and North Towards Home “The Age of Miracles itself seems a miracle, powerfully illustrating the serenity that people sometimes develop as they age, the reward for enduring all the difficulties and disappointments of life.” —San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle “The stories in this collection are among her best.” —Miami Herald
Download or read book Drunk with Love written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “There is not a single dud in this brilliant collection…crisp stories about marriage, blood, booze and death and the wayward passions fomented by them.”—Time Out From joyous moments to near insurmountable grief, National Book Award-winning author Ellen Gilchrist gives readers vignettes revealing the lives of some of her most memorable characters. In “Traceleen at Dawn,” we see the wealthy Miss Crystal finally give up drinking after a fire consumes her home. In “1941,” readers meet Rhoda Manning, a precocious nine-year-old facing off with the world of adults for the first time. In “The Last Diet,” a woman on a diet crashes her car into a doughnut shop. And murder takes center stage in “Memphis” and “The Emancipator.” Coming of age, heartbreak, death, and more permeate these brilliant snapshots of life from the author of the award-winning Victory over Japan, Acts of God, and other acclaimed works. “Smart, funny, moving, and elegantly written.”—Vogue “A writer with a distinctive voice and a considerable narrative gift.”—Publishers Weekly “There is not a single dud in this brilliant collection. The crisp stories about marriage, blood, booze and death and the wayward passions fomented by them.”—Time Out
Download or read book The Courts of Love written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A winning collection, filled with humor, love, and just enough human meanness to make things interesting. Gilchrist knows how to tell a story.” —Kirkus An indomitable cast of characters comes alive in this collection of shorts and a novella from acclaimed author Ellen Gilchrist. The unsinkable Nora Jane Whittington returns in “Nora Jane and Company,” now married and the mother of twins. But when a chance encounter between her husband and an old boyfriend leads to disaster, a pro-life protest turns deadly, and a camping trip proves nearly fatal, she’ll have to survive quite a lot to protect her happy home life. In the short stories that follow, old love affairs are revived, a dog caught in a domestic dispute finds an unlikely new home, and the bonds that tie families are once again explored with the deft hand for which Gilchrist is known. “Imbued with wry humor, nostalgia for lost innocence and gratitude for the power of memory to enrich life. Gilchrist's hand is sure, her vision keen and sometimes antic, and the world she has created in 12 previous books is expanded and enhanced by these luminous tales.”—Publishers Weekly
Download or read book A Dangerous Age written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All three are reconnecting the pieces of their lives and rediscovering love. But each is unwittingly on a collision course with a seemingly distant war that is really never more than a breath away."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Drunk with Love written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 1986 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of some of Ellen Gilchrist's best short stories.
Download or read book Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiction from a National Book Award-winning author and “short-story writer of substantial gifts and reputation” (The New York Times). From National Book Award Winner Ellen Gilchrist, a pillar of Southern literature hailed by the Washington Post as “a national treasure,” comes a colorful collection of short stories integrating favorite characters with captivating newcomers. Rhoda’s reveling in her childhood and infinite possibility in “The Tree Fort” and “The Time Capsule” is juxtaposed with her darker adulthood in “Mexico.” Nora Jane returns alongside Lin Tan Sing, a Chinese medical student and geneticist who predicts the birth of her twins. Fans of Gilchrist won’t want to miss the author’s exploration of the many stages of life—and the lightness and darkness each can bring. “Several stories in Gilchrist’s latest collection are distinguished by her old magic—they have energy and gusto and humor, and a dark layer of knowledge beneath their nostalgic tone.”—Publishers Weekly “A validation of the author’s skill and versatility. Gilchrist creates new experiences for characters from earlier stories and … creates new characters who reveal her skill in portraying character and place.”—Library Journal
Download or read book The Anna Papers written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2017-08-06 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A writer’s suicide sends ripples through the world she left behind: “A wonderful book…moving and tender and tough and unsentimental, all at the same time.”—Chicago Tribune An accomplished author with a string of devoted lovers, Anna Hand savors life in all of its bittersweet, fleeting moments. So when she gets a letter and discovers her brother has a daughter he never knew about, she sees a major part of life that has passed her by: a child to love. Desperate to unite this young girl with her father, Anna moves back to Charlotte, North Carolina, to rediscover her family and convince him to accept her. Caught between the politics of her upper-crust family and love for a married man, Anna finds her health in serious danger. When her bad days catch up with her good ones, she must finally face the disease that had been hiding just beneath the surface. Not willing to resign herself to months of aggressive treatment, and knowing the outcome will be the same regardless, she takes matters into her own hands, and surrenders her body to the sea. But it isn't only Anna's death that shocks her family. The papers she left behind may lead her sister Helen to discover more about Anna than she, or any of the Hand family, need to know… "Gilchrist excels in drawing the bonds of love and resentment in sexual and family relationships, and no one who encounters her characters here or in her earlier works will want to miss reading about them again." —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Nora Jane A Life in Stories written by Ellen Gilchrist and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-09-26 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since receiving the National Book Award for Victory Over Japan in 1985, Ellen Gilchrist has developed a fervently devoted readership. This collection's new novella is vintage Gilchrist, taking on the continuing joys and perils of Nora Jane and company.