Fruit of the Month

By Abby Frucht

Book Overview

This fine debut of twelve stories explores a topography of the interior, probing the thoughts, motivations, and little-understood impulses behind moments of aggression, jealousy, and loneliness. Turning her eye on the academic landscape as well as the workaday world, Frucht keenly observes people forging friendships, groping for greater self-understanding, and attempting to find meaning in their lives and loves.

Whether writing about a couple trying to conceive a much-wanted child or a lonely husband mourning the changing political attitudes of his wife, Frucht brings her characters and their lives into memorable focus. She builds a fictional world that resonates with the immediate and the familiar.

Although many books of contemporary fiction document the ways people often fail to communicate, the essential quality of Abby Frucht's characters is that they do communicate--connect--and gain part of what they want from life as a result. These stories are never about despair without also being about hope. They speak to each other as playfully and accidentally as memories do.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877451753
• ISBN13: 9780877451754
• Release Date: March 1988
• Publisher: University of Iowa Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

One of my alltime favorite collections of stories

In this collection the acuity of detail and the quirky eye for every tiny thing that makes a world unique are so finely tuned, so perfectly honed, that every page is a collection of intricate and beautifully rendered images. I love this book. I read "Midnight" over and over just to be in the world of it, and to marvel at its construction. If you read this book and love it and want more, read Licorice next. She's just as good in this novel as she is in the collection. A quietly stunning writer, no fanfare, no hype, just a solid body of excellent work.

A close and thought provoking look at a day in the life.

Abby Frucht takes ordinary experiences and turns them into unique "moments" in which you catch yourself feeling as though you are a voyeur into someone else's everday life. Intense and thought-provoking, this book made me want to pick up a pen and start writing.