3.5
Something Is Out There
ByPublisher Description
In these eleven unforgettable stories, Richard Bausch plumbs the depths of familial and marital estrangement, the gulfs between friends and lovers, the fragility and impermanence of love—and manages to find something quite surprising: human hope.
"A writer at the very top of his form. . . . So emotionally insightful, so masterful in subtle manipulation of plot and theme that the sheer beauty of the stories’ construction will move you almost as much as what happens in them.”—San Francisco Chronicle
With his signature grace, penetrating wit, and richly nuanced prose, Bausch explores the fragile bonds between husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and lovers—the gulfs that can open even in our most intimate connections, and the impermanence of love itself. Yet amid the estrangement and yearning, the miscommunications and betrayals, glimmers of resilient hope emerge. From the poignant unraveling of a long marriage to the bittersweet musings of a widower facing an uncertain future, these masterfully crafted tales showcase Bausch's unparalleled talent for illuminating our most profound human experiences.
"A writer at the very top of his form. . . . So emotionally insightful, so masterful in subtle manipulation of plot and theme that the sheer beauty of the stories’ construction will move you almost as much as what happens in them.”—San Francisco Chronicle
With his signature grace, penetrating wit, and richly nuanced prose, Bausch explores the fragile bonds between husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and lovers—the gulfs that can open even in our most intimate connections, and the impermanence of love itself. Yet amid the estrangement and yearning, the miscommunications and betrayals, glimmers of resilient hope emerge. From the poignant unraveling of a long marriage to the bittersweet musings of a widower facing an uncertain future, these masterfully crafted tales showcase Bausch's unparalleled talent for illuminating our most profound human experiences.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities5 Reviews
3.5
Tyler Smith
Created over 3 years agoShare
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Moomi
Created about 7 years agoShare
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Reahbee
Created about 11 years agoShare
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Josh Ang
Created over 12 years agoShare
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“In all of these stories, something unspoken haunts the characters - from within or without. Whether it's a fear of abandonment and loneliness, the acute sense of being left behind, by time, by fate or by the people who once held them dear, or even the fear of something as tangible as a mighty snow storm, Bausch addresses all these concerns with clarity and grace in his critical and incisive prose.
A striking feature of Bausch's writing is the way he enters into the character's consciousness and brings to light certain inoculate everyday objects or bits of the character's surroundings that gain a certain prominence unrelated to his/her feelings or thoughts. I find this device rather successful because it reflects our true-to-life fixation on objects or scenes when the feelings at hand are too much for us to handle or deal with right away.
None of these stories end in a way to suggest a resolution, recalling the works of other masters of the short form like Raymond Carver or
Ann Beattie, for instance. The sense of unease that lingers is best exemplified by the ending of the titular story, as a mother braces herself and her family against a snowstorm and possibly the consequences of her husband's (suggested) criminal dealings: "She leaned into the icy glass, put her fingers on the cold handle of the revolver, and watched the distant commotion of the storm for any sign of light, hoping for it even as she understood that when she saw it, if she saw it, she would have to try to determine what it meant - safe arrival, help, someone seeking shelter, or intending harm."”
Cash Whitney
Created over 13 years agoShare
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About Richard Bausch
Richard Bausch is the author of seven previous volumes of short stories and eleven novels. He is the recipient of an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, and, for his novel Peace, the American Library Association’s W. Y. Boyd Prize for Excellence in Military Fiction and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A past chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, he lives in Memphis, Tennessee, where he holds the Moss Chair of Excellence in the Writers Workshop of the University of Memphis.
Other books by Richard Bausch
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