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Miss Jane: A Novel

Miss Jane: A Novel

by Brad Watson (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2017

    $12.01
Synopsis

Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South, in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America.

Now, drawing on the story of his own great-aunt, Watson explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that would stand in the way of the central uses for a woman in that time and place: sex and marriage. From the highly erotic world of nature around her to the hard tactile labor of farm life, from the country doctor who befriends her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave her, Miss Jane Chisolm and her world are anything but barren.

The potency and implacable cruelty of nature, as well as its beauty, is a trademark of Watson's fiction. In Miss Jane, the author brings to life a hard, unromantic past that is tinged with the sadness of unattainable loves, yet shot through with a transcendent beauty. Jane Chisolm's irrepressible vitality and generous spirit give her the strength to live her life as she pleases in spite of the limitations that others, and her own body, would place on her. Free to satisfy only herself, she mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.

$12.01

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 288
 Edition: Reprint
 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 11 Jul 2017
ISBN 10: 0393354385
ISBN 13: 9780393354386

Media Reviews
Watson infuses the story with curiosity, uncertainty, and, not unlike Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, a certain wildness...The book plays on the tongue like an oyster-first salty, then cold-before slipping away to be consumed and digested. -- Aditi Sriram - Washington Post
A story worth telling even as it breaks your heart. -- Amy Brady - Chicago Review of Books
[Jane's] fearless acceptance of what sets her apart is profoundly human, and her lifelong struggle to understand her place in the world reflects the intricate workings of our own mysterious hearts. -- Gina Webb - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Watson has done something extraordinary here. This is not grit-lit...But it is Southern literature, nevertheless: fresh, new, without cliche. Watson may be our best. -- Don Noble - Alabama Writers' Forum
An exceptionally well written book. The prose was beautiful and the novel had a gentleness about it...I loved this book for its simplicity and would highly recommend it. -- Meredith Kelly - Luxury Reading
As Watson arcs through the story of Jane's life in sensitive, beautifully precise prose, we are both absorbed and humbled. -- Library Journal (starred)
A well-written portrait of a person whose rich inner life outstrips the limits of her body. -- Kirkus Reviews
Author Bio
Brad Watson teaches creative writing at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. His first collection, Last Days of the Dog-Men, won the Sue Kauffman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts & Letters; his first novel, The Heaven of Mercury, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and his Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.