You are Not a Stranger Here

by Adam Haslett (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.48

  Adam Haslett's first collection of stories, You Are Not a Stranger Here, is already causing a furore in the USA. The nine stories are set in Los Angeles, the Midwest, New England and England, but each summons its own complete and distinctive world. What unites them is the refined writing - elegiac in some instances - and a raw emotional power that carries the reader past the surface of the subject and into the core of the characters' lives. The characters include a widower, a teenage boy, a young couple, middle-aged siblings, a father and son, a bereaved mother, a psychiatrist, an orphaned boy who finds solace in a classmate's violence. There is grief, passion, loneliness, humour - marvellous humour - and longing in these stories, but ultimately the book sets off the shock of recognition that takes readers past the cliched language of human suffering and brings them to understand their own experience through the characters' lives.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $8.40

  In one of the most acclaimed fiction debuts in years, Adam Haslett explores the lives that appear shuttered by loss and discovers entire worlds hidden inside them. An ageing inventor, burning with manic creativity, tries to reconcile with his estranged gay son. An orphaned boy draws a thuggish classmate into a relationship of escalating guilt and violence. A genteel middle-aged woman, a long-time resident of a rest home, becomes the confidante of a lovelorn, teenage volunteer. With Checkovian restraint and compassion, conveying both the sorrow of life and the courage with which people rise to meet it, You Are Not A Stranger Here is a triumph.