We Come to Our Senses – Stories - Hardcover

Lindsey, Odie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393249603 ISBN 13: 9780393249606

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016

Synopsis

Lacerating and lyrical, We Come to Our Senses centers on men and women who are affected by combat directly and tangentially, and the ways in which war touches their lives back home. The story Evie M. is about a vet turned office clerk whose petty neuroses derail even her suicide; in 11/19/98 a couple obsesses over sitcoms as a distraction from darker complications; and in Colleen a young woman redeploys to a small town in Mississippi where she must confront the superior who abused her while at war. The story Hers is about the sexual politics of a combat zone.

From vets who dream of children to the children of veterans, to the perpetually postwar southern landscape itself, We Come to Our Senses is about the culture and memory of war."

About this title

Review:

The debut we hope for: heart-quickening, kinetic, relentless in its engagement with our time.--Paul Yoon

Lindsey writes with quiet confidence and sometimes arch humor that invites comparison to Ben Fountain and Phil Klay but that wouldn't displease Flannery O'Connor. Superb atmospherics coupled with arresting story lines.

Brutal, precise, like a bullet to the heart, Lindsey's prose is exactly right for conveying what war does to the human soul. Whether comic or tragic, the characters in these stories feel so vibratingly alive they seem to be whispering directly into your ear.--Helen Benedict, author of Sand Queen and The Lonely Soldier

Lindsey's debut artfully portrays the American South....Lindsey's lyrical, frenetic prose calls to mind Barry Hannah; and, like Hannah, he imparts a grim and pitying hope to his characters.

The writing here is nuanced, correct, and felt enough that, for once, 'Support Our Troops' is not political pablum. One might say that in Odie Lindsey's care 'Support Our Troops' is a literary imperative.--Padgett Powell, author of Cries for Help, Various

With a searing insightfulness and a dark humor all his own, Odie Lindsey holds up a powerful lens to an experience of modern American warfare that has been largely ignored in fiction--that of female veterans. This is collection about how the battles we wage with the external world are really only half the fight.--Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award Finalist and author of Once Upon a River

[A] gritty and ambitious debut collection...Odie Lindsey is an innovative and consummate prose stylist.--Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California

Here's an exciting, even thrilling new voice I'm delighted to read, to hear in my head. He's got all the notes, he's all in. Odie Lindsey's a terrific writer--pitch-perfect, entirely under control at high speed--who doesn't hold anything back.--Brad Watson, author of Aliens in the Primes of Their Lives

, but more particular in its examination of the new American veteran.

About the Author:

Odie Lindsey's stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, the Iowa Review, Columbia, and the anthology Forty Stories, among others. A veteran, he lives in Nashville.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0393249603
• ISBN 13: 9780393249606
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208