Everybody Loves Somebody (Paperback)

The prolific, protean Scott's latest is a collection of ten thematically linked stories that comprise an episodic history of love in the previous century.The author's pictorial imagination and gift for narrative economy are vividly displayed in the opening story, "Heaven and Hell," which offers glimpses into the hearts and minds of members of a 1919 wedding: the demonstrably happy couple, the bride's ne'er-do-well father, the benevolent uncle who assumes the latter's responsibilities-even a burly retriever that chases a stick, endangering the life of the boy who throws it. It's a precisely exfoliating anatomy of the pleasures-and perils-of marital love. The subsequent story, "Stumble," is an examination of the wasted life of an "easy" girl who seeks happiness in promiscuous sex, and "Worry" looks at maternal love through the story of a warmhearted matron whose children seek risks that will free them from her smothering protectiveness. In "Freeze-Out," meanwhile, "love at first sight" exposes a self-pitying retiree to the wiles of a family of amoral cardsharps. In the collection's finest story, "Across from the Shannonso," a bored apartment dweller can neither explain nor understand her eagerness "to sacrifice her father . . . for the sake of a hoodlum boy" whom her imagination has transformed from an arsonist's accomplice into a brooding romantic soul. Scott concludes with two ambitious, only partially successful, experiments: a mordant novella, "Or Else," which imagines four contrasting consequences for its unloved protagonist's childhood traumas; and a gathering of several brief incidents, "The Lucite Cane," in which love propels its variously connected characters into fateful chance meetings. Throughout, the author's abilities to concoct arresting premises instill a quirky sense of menace and enrich her narratives with metaphoric and allegorical implication that keeps the reader riveted to the page.One of America's most underrated, important writers, Scott gets better with every book. A must-read. (Kirkus Reviews)

At the seaside wedding of two lovers kept apart by the caprices of fate, a doting uncle looks on while his errant brother, father of the bride, struggles to free himself from a locked bathroom across town. A young woman arrives in Jazz Age New York with stars in her eyes and a few coins in her pocket and after a string of failed jobs, she thinks she's found salvation in a romance with her boss at a local greasy spoon but learns that her idea of herself and others' ideas of her are quite different. A bright business man seems content with all the trappings his good fortune affords, until a flat tire and a chance encounter with a couple of mechanics in the country upsets his entire view. Joanna Scott offers a group of tales that celebrate her acknowledged sense of character, plot and her gift for capturing the breathtaking tension even in life's quietest moments.

General

Imprint:	Little, Brown
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	2007
First published:	December 2006
Authors:	Joanna Scott
Dimensions:	216 x 135 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	224
ISBN-13:	978-0-316-01345-1
Categories:	Books > Fiction > Special features > Short stories
LSN:	0-316-01345-5
Barcode:	9780316013451

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