For a Little While

Title:

For a Little While

Author:

Bass, Rick

Subject:

Literature

Short Stories

Fiction

Description:

Long considered one of the most gifted practitioners of the short story, Rick Bass is unsurpassed in his ability to perceive and portray the enduring truths of the human heart. Now, at last, we have the definitive collection of stories, new and old, from the writer Newsweek has called "an American classic." To read his fiction is to feel more alive — connected, incandescently, to "the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience," as one of his characters puts it. These pages reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings. The intricate stories collected in For A Little While — brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery — have the power both to devastate and to uplift. Together they showcase an iconic American master at his peak.

Publisher:

Little, Brown and Company

Date:

2016/03/01

Digital Format:

READ IN BROWSER

ADOBE EPUB

KINDLE

Language:

English

ISBN:

9780316381178

Summary

Long considered one of the most gifted practitioners of the short story, Rick Bass is unsurpassed in his ability to perceive and portray the enduring truths of the human heart. Now, at last, we have the definitive collection of stories, new and old, from the writer Newsweek has called "an American classic." To read his fiction is to feel more alive -- connected, incandescently, to "the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience," as one of his characters puts it.

These pages reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings. The intricate stories collected in For A Little While -- brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery -- have the power both to devastate and to uplift. Together they showcase an iconic American master at his peak.

Author Notes

Rick Bass is the author of sixteen acclaimed books of fiction & nonfiction, including "Where the Sea Used to Be" & "The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness".

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Rick Bass readers will feel jubilant at the sight of this gathering of short stories spanning three decades, with 18 from five previous collections and seven glorious new tales. As a former petroleum geologist, Texas-born and -raised, Montana-rooted Bass envisions life on a vast time scale, perceives the preciousness of the planet, and contemplates our ravenous exploitation of nature in our quest for light and warmth, security and sustenance. Reverence and compassion shape each masterfully formed tale in which Bass handles language itself as a gift as essential as water or blood. His characters in moral or mortal peril seek connection to the fecundity and beauty of the earth as they are transfixed by sunsets, rivers, trees, fire, dragonflies, fish, and mountain lions, even as we devour the wild. In such previous stories as Wild Horses, a stunning examination of grief, and the exquisitely magical The Hermit's Story, Bass combines precision, realism, and profound imagination. In his new stories, he attains a fresh intensity of emotional nuance as he portrays individuals weighing desire and duty, regret and gratitude. Bass writes tenderly of fathers and their breath-catching, if inept, love for their daughters; strong women and the men who cautiously orbit them; and those who long for spiritual richness in a world that values material wealth. A collection of enrapturing radiance and depth, a beacon and a hearth.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist