Serious Kissing

By Barbara Selfridge

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1930180004
• ISBN13: 9781930180000
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Glad Day Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.5" x 5.5"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

Dear Barbara

Dear Barbara: Please forgive me for taking so long to finally get to your new book of stories, "Serious Kissing." You know what it's like being a college writing teacher--it seems there's hardly ever time for anything but student manuscripts. Thank heaven for the occasional summer off! What struck me most was the intimacy of the first-person voices of so many of the stories. Small wonder that Grace Paley wrote your foreward--you've got the same knack. And you show terrific range. It's hard enough to inhabit the point of view of left-leaning, idealistic, romantic American kids trying to change the world (sort of) in Puerto Rico (In your story "Catching the Last Publico,") but you've gone beyond that to pitch us the voice of Puerto Ricanas as well ("After Death You Still Believe in Love"). In my favorite story, "The Spread of Maoism," you write, "Listen, ludicrous things happen to the young and Maoist." That's a promise that you deliver on with aplomb. Who would imagine that an account of life behind the scenes among the joyless cadres of the Progressive Labor party could be so funny, and human, and endearing? I remember those people from the late 60s and always managed to keep my distance. Readers will share my delight that you evidently didn't (That or you're one heck of an acute researcher!). There it is: "Serious Kissing" is an intimate, funny, smart read, a short story collection that captures and preserves some of the unlikeliest slices on the left side of the American pie. Your pal (We did meet once, all those years ago), Rod