Themes recur narratives speak to one another - the effect is not so much of a sampling as of a suite. All of the pieces here have been exquisitely arranged to make this book. 'Pearlman peels back the surface of the conventional and reveals the more complicated emotions underneath.

Maybe from now on everyone will know of Edith Pearlman.' - Roxana Robinson, New York Times Book Review

The volume is an excellent introduction to a writer who should not need one. These quiet, elegant stories add something significant to the literary landscape. Pearlman's view of the world is large and compassionate, delivered through small, beautifully precise moments. 'Her writing is intelligent, perceptive, funny and quite beautiful. Give this wonderful collection to fans of such classic short story writers as Andre Dubus and Alice Munro and novelists like Nicole Krauss. A finely tuned collection by writer's writer Pearlman combines the best of previous collections (How to Fall etc.) with austere, polished new work.' - Publishers Weekly

No matter the situation in which her characters find themselves - an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, a lifetime of memories unearthed by an elderly couple's decision to shoplift, the deathbed secret of a young girl's forbidden forest tryst with the tsar, the danger that befalls a wealthy couple's child in a European inn of misfits - Edith Pearlman conveys their experience with wit and aplomb, with relentless but clear-eyed optimism, and with a supple prose that reminds us, sentence by sentence, page by page, of the gifts our greatest verbal innovators can bestow.īinocular Vision reveals a true American original, a master of the story, showing us, with her classic sensibility and lasting artistry, the cruelties, the longings, and the rituals that connect human beings across space and time. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers. Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these twenty-one vintage selected stories and thirteen scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. In this sumptuous offering, one of our premier storytellers provides a feast for fiction aficionados.

Binocular vision book by edith pearlman