Description
Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Set in modern-day America and France, Renaissance Italy and Boxer Rebellion China, these stories embrace whole lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Joan Silber skilfully and subtly ties one story to the next, as a minor element in one becomes a major element in the next, until the last is tied convincingly to the first. Intense in subject yet restrained in tone, they are about longings - often held for years - and the ways in which sex and religion can become parallel forms of dedication and comfort.
From a wannabe dancer in contemporary New York City to missionaries in China, Ideas of Heaven showcases Joan Silber's extraordinary deftness as she illuminates love, faith and sex with great originality and profundity.
Trade ReviewJoan Silber
renders the thirsts and devotions of six lives with clarifying exactitude. The sometimes gentle, sometimes raw connections between these people will move you, and the ardour with which they yearn for their respective heavens will break your heart. -- Anthony Doerr
[There are] books whose pieces are linked not by mere repetition of the protagonist but by
genuine artfulness and imaginative necessity: Joan Silber's splendid new
Ideas of Heaven, for example, in which the smallest wisp of one story will, in the next, sometimes blaze to full, unexpected life. * New York Times Book Review *
Love, like these beautiful stories, offers
devotion, consolation and transcendence. * Boston Globe *
Luminous, stunning...The stories gather wholeness through deepening meditations on devotion...and through the startling use of language. * Chicago Tribune *
Like William Trevor's writing and Alice Munro's, [Silber's] prose
embraces both particularity and grandeur...Her characters remind us that we will have other lives in this world, and that nothing ever stays the same. * Washington Times *
Silber covers a lot of ground in these stories, which have an epic sweep. Years pass. People grow and change.
She has an ear for language, a way of turning a phrase to make it mean more than it should. * Charlotte Observer *
Wonderfully evocative of time and place, this is a collection to be read and savored by all. * Booklist *
Silber's
wise, compassionate chronicles of longing, devotion and the search for comfort, both spiritual and physical, will move readers to contemplation and delight. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *
A standout...Silber travels the globe and centuries with ease. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *
