Can't and Won't: Stories - Hardcover

Davis, Lydia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374118582 ISBN 13: 9780374118587

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2014

Synopsis

A new collection of short stories from the woman Rick Moody has called "the best prose stylist in America"

Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of "Bloomington" reads, "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert's correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author's own dreams, or the dreams of friends.
What does not vary throughout Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis's fifth collection of stories, is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.

About this title

Review:

The most revolutionary collection of stories by an American in twenty-five years (John Freeman Boston Globe)

Profound, beautiful, moving. You will go back to a little gem that has wormed its way into your mind and stuck there, and discover that it is indeed a little gem, which sparkles a different way each time and flashes with a brief beauty or hidden meaning (Susan Hill Spectator)

Davis hints insistently at how abundant nothingness can be when we bother to look at it (Joshua Cohen Times Literary Supplement)

Among my most favourite writers. Read her now! (A. M. Homes)

Can't and Won't shows Davis using precise language to articulate the kind of ideas and impressions which are usually left to float around the subconscious (Max Liu Independent)

About the Author:

Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and four previous story collections, the most recent of which, Varieties of Disturbance, was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is also the acclaimed translator of Swann's Way (2003) and Madame Bovary (2010), both of which were awarded the French American Foundation Translation Prize. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, published in 2009, was described by James Wood in The New Yorker as a "grand cumulative achievement." She is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0374118582
• ISBN 13: 9780374118587
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 289