First, Body

by Melanie Rae Thon

Book Overview

In praise of her first story collection, Girls in the Grass, the New York Times wrote, " Melanie Rae Thon belts out her short stories in a tone and style reminiscent of classic blues singers . . . The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039578588X
• ISBN13: 9780395785881
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Forget to breathe!

I forget to breathe when I read this book. It's not just the voice and the characters--but the language that leaves me breathless. Her stories of homeless teens leave me frightened but I cannot get the scenes she paints out of my mind. Melanie Rae is good--very good--she is as graphic as Robert Morgan--maybe more. The only time I feel I'm reading stories of the same calibre of writing is when I read Annie Proulx. First body is powerful and you should not miss this book if you are a writer.

Practices What She Preaches

I completed a couple of Ms. Thon's workshops when she lived in Cambridge, MA. She was always stressing the voice of the character rather than the story. Teaching me that the characters will tell their own stories. In her latest collection, Melanie's characters tell and show us more than they ever have in previous works