3.5
Maggie Brown & Others
ByPublisher Description
In this powerful and virtuosic collection of interlocking stories, each one "a marvel of concision and compassion" (Washington Post), a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and "master of his form" (New York Times) takes the short story to new heights.
Through forty-four compressed gems, Peter Orner, a writer who "doesn't simply bring his characters to life, he gives them souls" (NYT Book Review), chronicles people whose lives are at inflection points, gripping us with a series of defining moments.
Whether it's a first date that turns into a late-night road trip to a séance in an abandoned airplane hangar, or a family's memories of the painful mystery surrounding a neglected uncle's demise, Orner reveals how our fleeting decisions between kindness and abandonment chase us across time. These stories are anchored by a poignant novella that delivers not only the joys and travails of a forty-year marriage, but an entire era in a working-class New England city. Bristling with the crackling energy of life itself, Maggie Brown & Others marks the most sustained achievement to date for "a master of his form" (New York Times).
- A New York Times Notable Book
- A Chicago Tribune Notable Book
- An Oprah Magazine Best Book of 2019
- Kirkus Reviews Best Short Fiction of 2019
- Longlisted for the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesMaggie Brown & Others Reviews
3.5
“I wanted to like this more. The micro-stories that had small but impactful moments of people’s lives. However, for me it fell short. Maybe I misunderstood the premise, but I thought that they were all linked, but it felt a little disjointed.”
“My personal reading experience with this is more like a 2.5, but because the writing is decent I don't want to be too harsh so I'll give it a 3 star.
I am gonna keep this short. Writing was decent, had a few quite moving passages, but overall this was just not for me. It is a collection of short stories and a novella that are all loosely connected by towns or some characters that are repeated, but other than that I was not able to really make the connections. I am sure this book is exactly what some people would love, but I just felt like I was completely missing the point and it was all going over my head. I don't want to trash this or rate it too low. But at the same time my reading experience with it just wasn't great so I want to be honest.”
About Peter Orner
Peter Orner, a two-time recipient of the Pushcart Prize, is the author of five previous books, including the novel Love and Shame and Love and the collection Esther Stories, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His memoir Am I Alone Here? was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Tin House, and Granta, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories. The recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fullbright to Namibia, Orner holds the Darmouth Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.
Other books by Peter Orner
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