Harmony of the World: Stories
160 pages
|Published: 1 Jan 1984
|Editions
|Details
This edition
ISBN: 9780679776512
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Publisher: Vintage
Publication date: 11 March 1997
Description
From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and “one of our most gifted writers” ( Chicago Tribune )—these ten stories show make everyday experiences seem utterly unprecedented, even as Baxter reminds us, gently and with a sly comic twist, that everything they feel is only the collateral damage of being human.
Whether he is writing about the players in a rickety bisexual love triangle or a woman visiting her husband in a nursing home, probing the psychic mainspring of a grimly obsessive weight lifter or sifting through the layers of resentment, need, and pity in a friendship that has gone on a few decades too long, Baxter enchants us with the elegant balance of his prose and the unexpectedness of his insights. Harmony of the World is a masterpiece of lucidity and compassion.
Whether he is writing about the players in a rickety bisexual love triangle or a woman visiting her husband in a nursing home, probing the psychic mainspring of a grimly obsessive weight lifter or sifting through the layers of resentment, need, and pity in a friendship that has gone on a few decades too long, Baxter enchants us with the elegant balance of his prose and the unexpectedness of his insights. Harmony of the World is a masterpiece of lucidity and compassion.
