Marconi's Dream

By Naton Leslie

In thirteen stories written in a style so carefully crafted that they appear etched, Naton Leslie's characters take a deep breath and make the impossible choices which circumstance, and the will to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1881515516
• ISBN13: 9781881515517
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Texas Review Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Turning up treasure in the most ordinary places

This book is a jewel box of real human characters, with real human emotions and hang-ups, joys and limitations. Leslie chronicles beautifully the not-so-simple lives of men and women in scruffy towns, people who find their meaning in such mundane pursuits as scavenging for treasures in trash left at the curbside or in the newly-dug furrows of a farmer's field. Like them, he uncovers uniqueness in the most ordinary places, in the days, thoughts and actions of his characters. He has a marvelous eye for the quirky--a display case of time-worn chewing gum sculptures, a warehouse full of famous pickled brains, a man who disconcerts a young woman by perching naked on the hood of her car--blending these bizarre details into the everyday ebb and flow of life in settings where, as one of his characters says, "nothing has ever happened." The characters might be odd; they might paper a town with posters to assuage their grief or spin a radio dial to find the universe's lost voices or try to channel Houdini's spirit on Halloween, but each one is utterly believable. Read these stories, and you recognize the restlessness we all feel living inside our too-earthbound skins. I myself enjoyed the hell out of them, both for their reality and their loopy but somehow plausible magic. They are small, pragmatic, touched by humor that is at times delightfully outrageous, and a wonderful read.Susan O'NeillAuthor, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam