Description
Book SynopsisA crowning collection from the award-winning short story writer Pamela Painter. Pamela Painter's short stories have been praised by Margot Livesey for their wicked intelligence and ruthless humor. In Fabrications, which brings together 7 new and 24 selected stories, characters struggle to avoid the chaos in their lives, butdriven by addictions and appetitesoften bring on disaster. Nobody is ordinary in Painter's stories. A burglar can't believe what he is asked to do by the woman whose jewelry he is stealing. Hitchhikers, hell-bent on murder, are thwarted by the miracle of story-telling. A wife can make roomsand her husbanddisappear, but saves the family dog. A young woman insists on the romance of being married in an Elvis Presley chapel, but for the wrong reasons. Fabrications is a testament to Painter's lyric skill and psychological insight across her career. Praise for Previous Books by Pamela Painter These wonderful storiesabout dogs and housewives, scholars and teenagersvivid
Trade Review[Painter's] latest stories, the ones that make up the opening section of her recently released
Fabrications: New and Selected Stories (Johns Hopkins University Press), would in and of themselves constitute ample reason to buy and enjoy the book. But in fact,
Fabrications draws from her entire career, giving us the finest stories from her four previous collections.
—Steve Yarbrough ,
Fiction Writer's ReviewA great pleasure of
Fabrications—and one of the most unusual aspects of the collection—is the variety of forms [used], from very short stories like "Dud"—in which a film editor creates a brilliant preview out of a terrible film—to much more expansive stories like "Her Elvis Presley Wedding.""
—Margot Livesay,
Lit HubThere are 31 stories in this collection, and I think each is a gem. Plunge headfirst into its pages and read right through or savor the stories slowly over time. There's a Painterly quality to it all. You've entered the house of a master, and you are safe in her hands
—Sherrie Flick,
SmokeLong QuarterlyFew writers can generate as much tension in so few pages as Painter . . . Painter's art lies in how she so efficiently dramatizes how foolishly we 'exaggerate, lie, edit.'
—
Arts FusePainter is too wise an artist to conclude that every fabrication, literary or not, must be damaging. Some are downright necessary. Painter's genius for subversion, for skewering her characters with their own self-serving lies and denials, is balanced by awareness of the vulnerabilities that can make reality so hard to bear.
—
Necessary FictionTable of ContentsNew Stories
Her Elvis Presley Wedding
Brochure
A Fabricated Life
Off Stage
Doors
Blood-Red Moon
Hitchhikers
From Getting to Know the Weather (1985)
The Next Time I Meet Buddy Rich
Intruders of Sleepless Nights
Something to Do
The Kidnappers
Getting to Know the Weather
From The Long and Short of It (1999)
Feeding the Piranha
Custody
New Family Car
The Real Story
The Bridge
The Second Night of a One-Night Stand
From Wouldn't You Like to Know: Very Short Stories (2010)
Appetites and Addictions
A View: Office at Night
Ice
Dud
Driver's Test
Put to Sleep
My Honey
From Ways to Spend the Night (2016)
Grief
Breathe
Reading in His Wake
Home Depot
Hindsight
Ways to Spend the Night
Acknowledgments
About the Author
