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Published Mar 2018
144 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
The sensational new story collection from one of our sharpest, most original, and daringly cinematic stylists, National Book Award finalist and O Henry Prize winner Christine Schutt.
In one eponymous novella and ten stories, Pure Hollywood brings us into private worlds of corrupt familial love, intimacy, longing, and danger. From an alcoholic widowed actress living in desert seclusion to a young mother whose rejection of her child has terrible consequences, from a newlywed couple who ignore the violent warnings of a painter burned by love to an eerie portrait of erotic obsession, each story is an imagistic snapshot of what it means to live and learn, love and hurt.
With Pure Hollywood Christine Schutt gives us sharply suspenseful and masterfully dark interior portraits of ordinary lives, infused with her signature observation and surprise. Timeless, incisive, and precise, these tales are a rush of blood to the head, portals through which we open our eyes and see the world anew.
"Starred Review. Intimate portrayals of darkness told in Schutt's tight and affecting prose." - Kirkus
"Schutt is always in control in this work by an experimental American writer of unparalleled style." - Publishers Weekly
"Schutt's restrained, provoking tales hold detailed impressions at arm's length, as it were, leaving readers to explore life's uneasy truths viewed through an unrelenting lens." - Booklist
"Love, negligence, irresponsibility, accident, and obsession combine with loss to make each story an event readers will remember vividly...This book will appeal to short story fans, especially those who enjoy the writing styles of J.D. Salinger and Katherine Mansfield. " - Library Journal
"Christine Schutt is already easily among the liveliest stylists of our time, and these eleven stories prove we ain't seen nothing yet. Each is a wonder, pickled in her crystalline idiom and cured under her brutal, astonishing wit." - Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus
"This book is a masterwork that hits way harder than its weight class, and achieves what great fiction always achieves--it commands us to be aware." - Matt Sumell, author of Making Nice
"Pure Hollywood is pure gold....Come for the art of her exquisitely weird writing and stay for the human drama. I loved each story - the quick flashes as well as the longer stories. Each one damaged my composure as a reader and fascinated me as a writer. Bravo!" - Ottessa Moshfegh, author of Eileen and Homesick for Another World.
This information about Pure Hollywood was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. 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 they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream 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.
Christine Schutt is the author of two collections of stories, Nightwork and A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer. She is also the author of the novels Prosperous Friends, Florida, a National Book Award finalist, and All Souls, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
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