An Evening Performance

by George Garrett

Book Overview

This gathering is meant to be a representative selection of short stories, old and new, previously published in book form or so far uncollected, covering roughly thirty years of time during which the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807121126
• ISBN13: 9780807121122
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
• Length: 518 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful stories

The stories collected in > are easy to read, even gripping, and you might even end up sitting down and not getting up until you've finished the collection. Then you can go back and read your favorites again and again. Mine: "The Last of the Spanish Blood," "The Test," "Noise of Strangers." Read your favorites again and know that when Garrett (in the intro) calls the story a gift, he's speaking more truly than maybe even he realizes.

Garrett is consummate craftsman

George Garrett is a consummate craftsman. There is no writer of short stories alive in America who can get you into a story faster than Garrett. If you want to learn how to write in this genre, there can be few better exemplars. It is true that you sometimes wish the stories ended more imaginatively, but they always do end inevitably--as they must. The pacing of Garrett's plots is always exactly right; his ear for dialogue never falters. The range of these stories is extensive, set as they are in small towns of the South (Florida), academic communities, military bases, Europe. The characters themselves include devilish boys, soldiers, mean-spirited academicians, small-town law. This collection, which will make you laugh and weep, is a book you'll want to travel with--it's definitely a book you'll be beating up.