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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Nov 2021, 240 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2022, 256 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Rebecca Foster
Buy This Book
By the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers, Lily King's first-ever collection of exceptional and innovative short stories.
With Writers & Lovers and Euphoria, Lily King's books catapulted onto bestseller and best-of-the-year lists across the country and established her as one of our most "brilliant" (New York Times Book Review), "wildly talented" (Chicago Tribune), and beloved authors in contemporary fiction. Now, for the first time ever, King collects ten of her finest short stories—half published in leading literary magazines and half brand new—opening fresh realms of discovery for avid and new readers alike.
Told in the intimate voices of unique and endearing characters of all ages, these tales explore desire and heartache, loss and discovery, moments of jolting violence and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs. A bookseller's unspoken love for his employee rises to the surface, a neglected teenage boy finds much-needed nurturing from an unlikely pair of college students hired to housesit, a girl's loss of innocence at the hands of her employer's son becomes a catalyst for strength and confidence, and a proud nonagenarian rages helplessly in his granddaughter's hospital room. Romantic, hopeful, brutally raw, and unsparingly honest, some even slipping into the surreal, these stories are, above all, about King's enduring subject of love.
Lily King's literary mastery, her spare and stunning prose, and her gift for creating lasting and treasured characters are on full display in this curated selection of short fiction. Five Tuesdays in Winter showcases an exhilarating new form for this extraordinarily gifted author writing at the height of her career.
Creature
The summer I was fourteen, a few months after my mother had moved us out of my father's house, I was offered a job on Widows' Point babysitting this old lady's grandchildren who had come to visit for two weeks. Mrs. Pike got her dresses fitted at my mother's shop and the two of them made these arrangements without consulting me. It wasn't like my other babysitting jobs, a few hours at a time. I had to live there. I can't remember the conversation with my mother, if I'd wanted to go or if I'd put up a fight. I fought her on so many things back then.
The Point was a frying pan–shaped spit of land that thrust out into the Atlantic. Beyond it, at low tide, you could see a crescent of rocks offshore, but at high tide the water hid them entirely. No doubt it was those rocks, several hundred years earlier, that made the widows who'd given the Point its name. My father still owned the house I'd grown up in, on the handle of the pan, and to get to the Pikes' from our apartment ...
Some of the stories are romantic, others are retrospective coming-of-age narratives and a few tip over into subtle magic realism. Most are set in New England, but the time and place varies from the 1960s to the present day and from Maine to northern Europe. Several stories look back to a 1980s adolescence. "South" and "The Man at the Door" are refreshingly different, incorporating touches of magic and suspense. There aren't particularly strong linking themes, apart from the categories of love and coming of age. While I'd hoped for a tighter knit between stories, some are excellent, and the questions of love's transience and whether any relationship can ever match up to expectations linger...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
Ann Patchett
Five Tuesdays in Winter moved me, inspired me, thrilled me. It filled up every chamber of my heart. I loved this book.The stories in Lily King's Five Tuesdays in Winter include settings in Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts, three of the six northeastern states of the USA that are collectively known as New England (the others being New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island). Below we've highlighted some other contemporary authors who reside in and/or set their fiction in New England, along with examples of their works that reference the region.
Stephen L. Carter: Carter has been a law professor at Yale since 1982. Alongside his academic publications, he has written six novels. These are epic works of suspense, some historical and some contemporary, and often involve legal battles. His main characters are generally upper-class African Americans. ...
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