Book Summary and Reviews of All the Time in the World by E.L. Doctorow

All the Time in the World by E.L. Doctorow

All the Time in the World

New and Selected Stories

by E.L. Doctorow

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  • Published:
  • Mar 2011, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to World’s Fair, The March, and Homer & Langley, the fiction of E. L. Doctorow comprises a towering achievement in modern American letters. Now Doctorow returns with an enthralling collection of brilliant, startling short fiction about people who, as the author notes in his preface, are somehow "distinct from their surroundings - people in some sort of contest with the prevailing world."

A man at the end of an ordinary workday, extracts himself from his upper-middle-class life and turns to foraging in the same affluent suburb where he once lived with his family.

A college graduate takes a dishwasher's job on a whim, and becomes entangled in a criminal enterprise after agreeing to marry a beautiful immigrant for money.

A husband and wife's tense relationship is exacerbated when a stranger enters their home and claims to have grown up there.

An urbanite out on his morning run suspects that the city in which he's lived all his life has transmogrified into another city altogether.

These are among the wide-ranging creations in this stunning collection, resonant with the mystery, tension, and moral investigation that distinguish the fiction of E. L. Doctorow. Containing six unforgettable stories that have never appeared in book form, and a selection of previous Doctorow classics, All the Time in the World affords us another opportunity to savor the genius of this American master.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"A wonderful compendium, even for those who have read Doctorow exhaustively, because the organization is so illuminating." - Library Journal

"A landmark collection from a preeminent and popular writer who elevates the best-seller lists with each new book." - Booklist

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Author Information

E.L. Doctorow Author Biography

Named for Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the history of American literature. On a shortlist that might also include Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Don DeLillo, E. L. Doctorow is generally considered to be among the most talented, ambitious, and admired novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. Long celebrated for his vivid evocations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American life (particularly New York life), Doctorow has received the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howell Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal.

Doctorow was...

... Full Biography
Link to E.L. Doctorow's Website

Name Pronunciation
E.L. Doctorow: DAHK-tuh-row (emphasis on the first syllable. Russian for 'son of a doctor')

Other books by E.L. Doctorow at BookBrowse
  • The March jacket
  • Homer & Langley jacket

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