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Maureen
F. McHugh is the author of four acclaimed novels. Her genre-expanding
short fiction has won the Hugo and Locus Awards and has
frequently been included in Best of the Year anthologies.
Since 1988 she has attracted a broad readership in publications
such as Asimov's, Scifiction, Starlight, The Year's Best
Science Fiction, and The Year's Best Fantasy and
Horror.
Now, in
her luminous, long-awaited debut collection, award-winning
novelist Maureen F. McHugh wryly and delicately examines
the impacts of social and technological shifts on families.
Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates
the relationship between parents and children and the expected
and unexpected chasms that open between generations.
- A
woman introduces her new lover to her late brother.
- A teenager
is interviewed about her peer group's attitudes toward sex
and baby boomers.
- A missing stepson
sets a marriage on edge.
- Anthropologists
visiting an isolated outpost mission are threatened by
nomadic raiders.
McHugh's characters
-- her Alzheimers-afflicted parents or her smart and rebellious
teenagers -- are always recognizable: stubborn, human, and
heartbreakingly real.
The trade paperback
has added material for book clubs and reading groups, including
an interview
with the author, book club questions
and suggestions, and a reprint of Maureen's fabulous essay,
"The
Evil Stepmother."
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Reviews
"Gorgeously crafted
stories."
-- Nancy Pearl (Book Lust) on Morning Edition, "Books
for a Rainy Day"
"Unpredictable and
poetic work."
-- Cleveland
Plain Dealer (Recommended Summer Reading)
"[McHugh] cherry-picks
subtle magical or futuristic elements from the expansive genre
library."
-- Angle
"McHugh's prose style
is unique."
-- LEO
(Louisville Eccentric Observer)
"McHugh's stories
are hauntingly beautiful."
-- Booklist
"The 13 stories in
McHugh's debut collection offer poignant and sometimes heartwrenching
explorations of personal relationships and their transformative
power.... McHugh (Nekropolis) relates her stories as slices
of ordinary life whose simplicity masks an emotional intensity
more often found in poetry. The universality of these tales
should break them out to the wider audience they deserve."
-- Publishers Weekly
"Passion
and precision."
-- Locus
"McHugh
is enormously talented.... [She] has a light touch, a gentle
sense of a humor, and a keen wit.
-- Strange
Horizons
"There's
not a single story
that isn't strong, and most are brilliant."
-- Ideomancer |
A Book Sense
Notable Book.
BookStandard.com Interview.
Maureen McHugh & Sarah Willis in conversation: parts 1,
2 &
3.
Advance Praise
"My favorite
thing about her is the wry, uncanny tenderness of her stories.
She has the astonishing ability to put her finger on the sweet
spot right between comedy and tragedy, that pinpoint that makes
you catch your breath. You're not sure whether to laugh out loud
or cry, and you end up doing both at once."
-- Dan Chaon, Among the Missing"
When I first
read China Mountain Zhang many years ago, Maureen McHugh
instantly became, as she has remained, one of my favorite writers.
This collection is a welcome reminder of her power -- they are
resonant, wise, generous, sharp, transporting, and deeply, deeply
moving. McHugh is enormously gifted; each of these stories is
a gift."
-- Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club
"Wonderfully
unpredictable stories, from the very funny to the very grim, by
one of our best and bravest imaginative writers."
--Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes
"Enchanting,
funny and fierce by turns -- a wonderful collection!"
-- Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace
On the web:
Novel excerpts:
Credits
- Cover image © Conde Nast Archive/Corbis.
Photographer: Erwin Blumenfeld.
Download cover for
print.
Also
Available
hardcover
| limited edition
| ebook | paperback
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