Description
Book SynopsisA powerful short story collection that charts the yearning inherent in imperfect lives. Winner of the American Fiction Award for Short Story Fiction by the American Book FestI'm a seeker, the narrator of My Life as a Mystic says. A watcher of the skies. A pilgrim and a wanderer. I don't know, I couldn't stand law school. Such are the polar sentiments of the characters in the stories of David Borofka's A Longing for Impossible Things, which charts the yearning inherent in imperfect lives. Taking their cue from Fernando Pessoa's painful landscape of longing for the impossible, the ministers and missionaries of Fire and Coincidence look for more than what they find in their respective theologies; they reject what they've been told in favor of what they feel. Meanwhile, everyday believers fall back upon their own intuition and pray for revelation to be forthcoming. Lovers are forced to recognize the finite limitations of their grand infatuations even as they hope for some small measure o
Trade ReviewThere is a good deal of failure and despair, misfortune, sickness and death. But Borofka is no cynic. The stories are often wonderfully funny.
—
Don Noble's Book Reviews, Alabama Public RadioShort story lovers can rejoice in this much-awaited collection, A Longing for Impossible Things, from the Iowa Short Fiction Award-winning David Borofka, a master of the form. Regardless of the failings of his narrators and assorted ne'er do well characters, these tales are told in a generous, recognizably human voice, marking Borofka as a writer in whose company you'll find deep pleasure.
—Nancy Spiller,
Complusive ReaderThe comedy of seeking is rarely so sympathetically portrayed as in Borofka's hands; he captures perfectly the poignancy of dopey mortals dreaming and scheming to reach the divine.
—Peter Manseau,
Image JournalTable of ContentsMy Life as a Mystic
High School and the Mysteries of Everything Else
Coincidence
Spies
O Perfect, Perfect Love!
A Tale Told by Rube Goldberg Begins and Ends with Dogs
Fire
Next Day
The Volcano Lover
The Nothing between Us
Christmas in Jonestown
Retirement Dogs
Attachments for the Platonically Inclined
Acknowledgements
