In Another Country: Selected Stories

Praise for In Another Country

Constantine's stories ache with concern for the retreating, vulnerable, sacred natural world. --New York Times Book Review

Revelatory ... [David Constantine] is always attuned to the interplay between the tangible and the invisible. His stories closely attend to the wonders of the habitable world--what one character calls 'the earth's lovely phenomena, ' while they map the inner kingdom of the mind, echoing the hidden cataracts of the characters' desires and regrets. --Wall Street Journal

The diverse characters [of In Another Country] include ex-monks, shamed canons, prostitutes, squatters, successful businessmen, and university professors, but a common thread of silent suffering and dignity ties them all together. The tragic and the beautiful in each of their experiences is heightened by the author's impeccable eloquence and poetic imagery ... A brilliant selection. --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

[Constantine] has a remarkable ear for both poetic and common prose ... [H]is work is too beholden to the actual or possible to be classified as fantasy or allegory, but his stories plunge the reader so deeply into the boundary-less country of the human psyche that it feels wrong to describe them as examples of psychological realism ... That's one of the many messages embedded in the collection: that life is too messy, too mysterious and permeable, to fit into singular categories. It's not a new message, but it's rare to see it stated with such style and conviction. --Toronto Star

[David Constantine's] world sometimes recalls those of Harold Pinter and Ian McEwan, in which the banal niceties of comfortable living--dinners, funerals for colleagues, business trips--seem to conceal great menace ... It's what goes unspoken in so many of these stories that seems so powerful ... An author who deserves serious consideration. --Kirkus' Reviews

Enduringly powerful ... Constantine's great skill lies in his ability to create moments that feel not like authorial intrusions but rather fleeting recognitions, whether of insurmountable loneliness or inchoate hope. --Henri Lipton, ZYZZYVA

After reading David Constantine's story 'In Another Country' ... I can't figure out why a U.S. press hasn't caught on to his work ... Thankfully, Biblioasis will publish a selection of his stories next year. --Nicole Rudick, The Paris Review

There are writers for whom place is a key component of authorial sensibility ... Joyce had Dublin; Faulkner and Twain had their respective portions of Mississippi. David Constantine ... refuse[s] to restrict [his] settings to background scenery, choosing instead to fully inhabit the place in which [his] stories unfold ... Constantine's artistic vision, like the land he takes as his setting, is bleak and rugged ... In [his] universe, art, love and death are never very far apart. --The Globe and Mail

.. . [I]t's the precision of David Constantine's prose that gets you first. His descriptions, his dialogue--it's all so unnervingly exact, dropping you into scenes that are both immediately recognizable and profoundly unsettling. --Beatrice

[S]adness and pity ... infuse much of this book, but the stories never suffer from a sense of sameness. That's because Constantine begins and ends stories in places few writers would imagine, and in between he shifts direction in ways few readers will expect. --Star Tribune

Set on islands and coasts, furnished with the 'silver ladders' of streams, featuring wishing wells and even a cursing well, the virtuoso stories of David Constantine's In Another Country pulse with the sounds and rhythms of water, rhythms that draw characters and readers alike into uncommon and exceptionally profound emotional depths. --Laurie Greer, Politics and Prose

I cried when I finished the title story, and I wandered about the landscapes and houses Constantine created thereafter. The depth of setting in the stories allows the reader to reflect on characters' relationship struggles in their homes or temporary dwellings, whether that means in a field, a book-filled house, or a cave. There is plight here, even if it sometimes appears small, because even the closest relationships we grow around us where we live are never definitively part of us--and each character reacts to this in a different way. --Todd Wellman, Boswell Book Company

A masterful touch ... The entire collection comprises richly rewarding, unforgettable stories gathered from over four books and two decades of work. --Scout Magazine

[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling. --Sabotage Reviews

Praise for David Constantine

Rich and allusive and unashamedly moving. --The Independent

Spellbinding. --The Irish Times

An uneasy blend of the exquisite and the everyday ... the beatific, the ordinary, the rebarbative even, are almost indistinguishable ... intelligent and well-turned. --The Times Literary Supplement

[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling. --Frank Lawton, Sabotage Reviews

Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form. --The Reader

Praise for In Another Country

Constantine's stories ache with concern for the retreating, vulnerable, sacred natural world. --New York Times Book Review

Revelatory ... [David Constantine] is always attuned to the interplay between the tangible and the invisible. His stories closely attend to the wonders of the habitable world--what one character calls 'the earth's lovely phenomena, ' while they map the inner kingdom of the mind, echoing the hidden cataracts of the characters' desires and regrets. --Wall Street Journal

The diverse characters [of In Another Country] include ex-monks, shamed canons, prostitutes, squatters, successful businessmen, and university professors, but a common thread of silent suffering and dignity ties them all together. The tragic and the beautiful in each of their experiences is heightened by the author's impeccable eloquence and poetic imagery ... A brilliant selection. --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

[Constantine] has a remarkable ear for both poetic and common prose ... [H]is work is too beholden to the actual or possible to be classified as fantasy or allegory, but his stories plunge the reader so deeply into the boundary-less country of the human psyche that it feels wrong to describe them as examples of psychological realism ... That's one of the many messages embedded in the collection: that life is too messy, too mysterious and permeable, to fit into singular categories. It's not a new message, but it's rare to see it stated with such style and conviction. --Toronto Star

[David Constantine's] world sometimes recalls those of Harold Pinter and Ian McEwan, in which the banal niceties of comfortable living--dinners, funerals for colleagues, business trips--seem to conceal great menace ... It's what goes unspoken in so many of these stories that seems so powerful ... An author who deserves serious consideration. --Kirkus' Reviews

Enduringly powerful ... Constantine's great skill lies in his ability to create moments that feel not like authorial intrusions but rather fleeting recognitions, whether of insurmountable loneliness or inchoate hope. --Henri Lipton, ZYZZYVA

After reading David Constantine's story 'In Another Country' ... I can't figure out why a U.S. press hasn't caught on to his work ... Thankfully, Biblioasis will publish a selection of his stories next year. --Nicole Rudick, The Paris Review

There are writers for whom place is a key component of authorial sensibility ... Joyce had Dublin; Faulkner and Twain had their respective portions of Mississippi. David Constantine ... refuse[s] to restrict [his] settings to background scenery, choosing instead to fully inhabit the place in which [his] stories unfold ... Constantine's artistic vision, like the land he takes as his setting, is bleak and rugged ... In [his] universe, art, love and death are never very far apart. --The Globe and Mail

.. . [I]t's the precision of David Constantine's prose that gets you first. His descriptions, his dialogue--it's all so unnervingly exact, dropping you into scenes that are both immediately recognizable and profoundly unsettling. --Beatrice

[S]adness and pity ... infuse much of this book, but the stories never suffer from a sense of sameness. That's because Constantine begins and ends stories in places few writers would imagine, and in between he shifts direction in ways few readers will expect. --Star Tribune

Set on islands and coasts, furnished with the 'silver ladders' of streams, featuring wishing wells and even a cursing well, the virtuoso stories of David Constantine's In Another Country pulse with the sounds and rhythms of water, rhythms that draw characters and readers alike into uncommon and exceptionally profound emotional depths. --Laurie Greer, Politics and Prose

I cried when I finished the title story, and I wandered about the landscapes and houses Constantine created thereafter. The depth of setting in the stories allows the reader to reflect on characters' relationship struggles in their homes or temporary dwellings, whether that means in a field, a book-filled house, or a cave. There is plight here, even if it sometimes appears small, because even the closest relationships we grow around us where we live are never definitively part of us--and each character reacts to this in a different way. --Todd Wellman, Boswell Book Company

A masterful touch ... The entire collection comprises richly rewarding, unforgettable stories gathered from over four books and two decades of work. --Scout Magazine

[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling. --Sabotage Reviews

Praise for David Constantine

Rich and allusive and unashamedly moving. --The Independent

Spellbinding. --The Irish Times

An uneasy blend of the exquisite and the everyday ... the beatific, the ordinary, the rebarbative even, are almost indistinguishable ... intelligent and well-turned. --The Times Literary Supplement

[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling. --Frank Lawton, Sabotage Reviews

Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form. --The Reader