If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

by RobinBlack (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.77

  From the blind girl who sees more than her parents can, to the portrait artist who sees more than her clients would wish, Robin Black illuminates secret fears, hidden desires, profound grief and enduring love in a collection as rich and varied as the relationships it describes. These are generous and compassionate stories for anyone attuned to the intricate heartbreak of families -- to our power to hurt and to nurture those we love best. 'Full of substance and colour. Many short stories have a habit of evaporating not long after you've read them. Black's have an uncanny tendency to stick around' Metro 'An exploration of secret monologues and private emotions that makes for an illuminating, moving and universally resonant experience' Easy Living 'Exquisitely distilled tales of loss and reckoning' Vogue 'Black writes with grace and simplicity' TLS

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.50

  Robin Black creates worlds within worlds. Her stories turn on a glance or a phrase - or, more often, on that which is not expressed. If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This explores life's rich silences: in relationships both acknowledged and covert, and in the unspoken, often treacherous dynamics of families in which so much goes unsaid. A mother, retired to the countryside with her elderly husband, plays sensitive host to her daughter and her secret lover even while she mourns the embers of her own relationship. A blind teenager sees the fractures in her parents' marriage more clearly than they can themselves.

  These stories are luminous, wise and unerringly humane, and their emotional generosity is all the more moving for Black's restrained and accomplished style. This is an extraordinarily poised debut collection from one of America's brightest new voices.

  `Robin Black knows people. She knows us, she loves us, she takes pity on us and she offers us back to ourselves in clear-eyed and graceful prose' Amy Bloom

  `She creates that special kind of literary magic, where a reader experiences everything, right alongside, and it all feels new' Hannah Tinti

  `This collection of short stories might more accurately be called a collection of short novels, such is their richness of characterization and plot' Elizabeth Berg

  `Like bulletins from the front, these magnificent stories shine a light on what it means to be human' Dani Shapiro

  `Few first collections - few collections of any sort - are as intelligent and as moving about both the durability of love and the implacability of loss' Jim Shepard

• New

  Paperback
  2011

  $10.40

  From the blind girl who sees more than her parents can, to the portrait artist who sees more than her clients would wish, Robin Black illuminates secret fears, hidden desires, profound grief and enduring love in a collection as rich and varied as the relationships it describes. These are generous and compassionate stories for anyone attuned to the intricate heartbreak of families -- to our power to hurt and to nurture those we love best. 'Full of substance and colour. Many short stories have a habit of evaporating not long after you've read them. Black's have an uncanny tendency to stick around' Metro 'An exploration of secret monologues and private emotions that makes for an illuminating, moving and universally resonant experience' Easy Living 'Exquisitely distilled tales of loss and reckoning' Vogue 'Black writes with grace and simplicity' TLS