Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Oct 2016
184 pages
Genre: Short Stories/Essays
Publication Information
Joyce Carol Oates calls debut author Clare Beams "wickedly sharp-eyed, wholly unpredictable "a female/feminist voice for the twenty-first century."
The literary, historic, and fantastic collide in these wise and exquisitely unsettling stories. From bewildering assemblies in school auditoriums to the murky waters of a Depression-era health resort, Beams's landscapes are tinged with otherworldliness, and her characters' desires stretch the limits of reality. Ing énues at a boarding school bind themselves to their headmaster's vision of perfection ; a nineteenth-century landscape architect embarks on his first major project, but finds the terrain of class and power intractable ; a bride glimpses her husband's past when she wears his World War II parachute as a gown ; and a teacher comes undone in front of her astonished fifth graders.
As they capture the strangeness of being human, the stories in We Show What We Have Learned reveal Clare Beams's rare and capacious imagination - and yet they are grounded in emotional complexity, illuminating the ways we attempt to transform ourselves, our surroundings, and each other.
"Starred Review. A richly imagined and impeccably crafted debut." - Kirkus
"Beams is an expert at providing odd and surprising details that make her stories come alive, and the result is a powerful collection about what we need from others and, in turn, what we can offer others of ourselves." - Publishers Weekly
This information about We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories shown above was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Kristi Jan Hoover
Clare Beams is the author of the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, which won the Bard Prize and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. With her husband and two daughters, she lives in Pittsburgh, where she teaches creative writing, most recently at Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.
Become a Member and discover books that entertain, engage & enlighten.
The Prophets
by Robert Jones Jr.
A stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation.
Reader Reviews
At the Edge of the Haight
by Katherine Seligman
Winner of the 2019 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.
Reader Reviews
Information is the currency of democracy
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
