検索キーワード： 著者 "Elizabeth McCracken" すべてのカテゴリー

From L.A. to rural Ireland, from war-torn Beirut to a windswept Scottish coastline, from the bright lights of the theatre to the dimness of the therapist’s office - these six outstanding and impactful stories seek to explore grief and trauma, new beginnings and hope. The shortlisted stories have all been chosen for 2021's Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award - the world's richest and most prestigious prize for a single short story. Dubbed the 'equivalent of the Man Booker for the short story' by the Sydney Morning Herald, the winner receives £30,000.

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Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother’s life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.

A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.

In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear.

The nine stories that make up Elizabeth McCracken’s debut story collection deal with oddball characters doing their very best to forge connections with those around them. In “It’s Bad Luck to Die”, a woman marries an older tattoo artist and finds comfort in agreeing to act as a canvas for his most elaborate work. And in the title story, a young man and his wife are perplexed when an outspoken old woman shows up on their doorstep for a visit, claiming to be a distant aunt, even though she can’t be traced on a family tree.

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the 20th century - nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and 15 pounds of gold on her person - Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark - with Bertha its most notable resident.

The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod, 26-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt - the "over-tall" 11-year-old boy who's the talk of the town - walks into her library and changes her life. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship, but nevertheless, they find their lives intertwined. And as James grows - six-foot-five at age 12, then seven feet, then eight - so does Peggy's heart and their most singular romance.

Writing can feel like an endless series of decisions. How does one face the blank page? Move a character around a room? Deal with time? Undertake revision? The good and bad news is that in fiction writing, there are no definitive answers to such questions: writers must come up with their own. Elizabeth McCracken, author of bestselling novels, National Book Award long-listed story collections, and a highly praised memoir, has been teaching for more than thirty-five years, guiding her many students through their own answers.