S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Summary and book reviews of My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead by Jeffrey Eugenides, plus links to an excerpt from My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead and a biography of Jeffrey Eugenides.
My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
by
Jeffrey Eugenides
Hardcover: Jan 2008,
608 pages.
Paperback: Jan 2009,
600 pages.
"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name . . . .
It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."— Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead.
All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Book Reviews
BookBrowse - Lucia Silva
With his artful curating, Eugenides has conquered one of the biggest problems of the short story collection. Reading anthologies can often be a dust-collecting, bedside-lingering process. Usually grouped by time period, nationality, publication, or award, they often serve primarily as a reference, introduction, or catalog, and editors are careful to make their personalities invisible. This makes them useful, reliable, and enjoyable for their parts, but unremarkable as a whole. My Mistress's Sparrow is exactly the opposite. It's not intended as a comprehensive survey of the greatest love stories of all time. Nor is it a treatise on love, as Eugenides warns in his excellent introduction. ("Please keep in mind: my subject here isn't love. My subject is the love story.") Instead, these are the selections of a reader; an impassioned, expert, committed, and discriminating reader; one who remembers that the best kind of reading comes from picking favorites. Full Review (members only, 1009 words).
Library Journal - Patrick Sullivan
Some of the best moments come from younger writers, who somehow manage to match the masters here step for step. An essential acquisition.
Miami Herald - John Mark Eberhart
I can in good conscience recommend one very good gift for this Valentine's Day: "My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, From Chekhov to Munro," edited by Jeffrey Eugenides.
St Louis Post-Dispatch - Steve Giegerich
Falling somewhere in the middle of the canon is the English translation of "Tonka," Robert Musil's wrenching account of the entanglement between an Austrian aristocrat and an emotionally absent Czech peasant.
By every measure of prose and content, "Tonka" — a slow dance toward intimacy ultimately marred by infidelity — exemplifies the quality work found on every page of Mistress's Sparrow.
"How little one knows what one knows, or wants what one wants," the 20th-century Austrian author writes in a coda that eloquently captures the sum and substantive heart — in the contextual sense of the word — of this fluent retrospective on love.
Cleveland Plain Dealer - Tricia Springstubb
Love is many splendored, but the love story is simple. Pain, bliss, new pain is the basic outline. Which doesn't mean, of course, that love isn't at the heart (yes) of the most gorgeous, revelatory fiction ever written. Joy! Jealousy! Delight! Despair! In this wonderful new anthology, love stories large and small, familiar and exotic, heap up like bouquets left at the scene of a fatal highway accident.
Los Angeles Times - Louisa Thomas
The plots are wildly different; the range in tone, form and style is immense. This brings unexpected delights. It is, for example, a small thrill to go from the solemn, lapidary language of "The Dead" straight into Denis Johnson's "Dirty Wedding," with its rush of words and inarticulate speed ("yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah"). And it is a bigger thrill to realize that however painful the heartbreak, love offers real rewards -- and these stories are among them.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
What drives a man to stay in a marriage, in a job? What forces him away? Is love or conscience enough to overcome the darker, stronger urges of the natural world? The Unnamed is a deeply felt, luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human understanding.
Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ...
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I was sorry to see that there were so few reviews. I started reading COAL and could not stop. The only thing I am going to say is that I wish ...
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The tragedy, the sorrow, the loss, is almost too much for me to recommend this; on the other hand Mistry made me believe I knew these characters. I ...
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Samsung introduces eReader(Mar 10 2010) Yesterday, Samsung announced the Samsung eReader, a $299 device which allows you to take notes in the margins and share content with other Samsung eReaders....
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Books overtake games as most numerous iPhone apps(Mar 10 2010) The electronic book passed another milestone this month, with the number of books available on the iTunes App Store passing the number of games for the first...
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My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead
(members only, 1009 words).
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