By Love Possessed: Stories - Hardcover

Goodison, Lorna

3.76

145 ratings by Goodreads

9780771035777: By Love Possessed: Stories

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0771035772 ISBN 13: 9780771035777

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd, 2010

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These beautifully crafted stories will introduce readers to the fiction of one of our literary bright lights – Lorna Goodison, the internationally renowned poet and award-winning author of the memoir From Harvey River. In sensuous language textured with the cadences of Creole speech, these stories vividly evoke a world where pride, injustice, love, and unexpected changes of fortune leave their mark but cannot extinguish the human spirit.

When her past lover returns to Jamaica with his Irish bride, a successful businesswoman must contend with her old flame's renewed courtship. A well-known chanteuse with humble beginnings tells a young female reporter the tale of her life's great turnaround. In the Pushcart Prize-winning story “By Love Possessed,” Goodison reveals the melancholy and resilience of a woman whose illusions about her dream man come to a disturbing and abrupt end.

With warm humour, empathy, and an unsentimental and perceptive eye for the foibles of human relationships, Goodison immerses us into the lives of an unforgettable community of people as they face challenges both intensely private and universally recognizable.

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Review:

"Goodison is one of the best writers -- Canadian, Jamaican or otherwise -- you've probably never heard of. This should change with the publication of By Love Possessed, a virtuosic collection of short stories that...will likely stand among the best books released in 2011."
-- "National Post"

"Halfway through Goodison's stunning collection, By Love Possessed, I realized I was holding my breath. . . .Goodison's alchemy of standard and Jamaican English locates us deep within the consciousness of her people. "
-- Donna Bailey Nurse, "Globe and Mail"
"From the Hardcover edition."

"Every tale . . . introduces characters that will sustain your interest far more than novels with twice the length and none of the panache of Goodison's sparkling prose."--Essence

"A matchless mosaic portrait. . . . A perfect complement to her evocative, widely admired memoir. . . . The voices come vividly off the page. . . . [Goodison] taps deeply into universal experience and offers up these lives with brutal honesty and poignant humanism."--Elle

"Alternating between flat-out humor, aching pain, and the confusion of bridging cultures, [these] stories weave around one another in a rhythmic, engaging palette of language and characters sure to remain with the reader."--Booklist

"[A] captivating and poetic collection."--Library Journal

"Goodison deals with the physical world and the words flung between her powerful characters--she's scoring a dance. . . . It's an addictive game to play, paying attention to the silences in the songs."--Daily Beast

A matchless mosaic portrait. . . . A perfect complement to her evocative, widely admired memoir. . . . The voices come vividly off the page. . . . [Goodison] taps deeply into universal experience and offers up these lives with brutal honesty and poignant humanism. --Elle"

Every tale . . . introduces characters that will sustain your interest far more than novels with twice the length and none of the panache of Goodison s sparkling prose. --Essence"

Alternating between flat-out humor, aching pain, and the confusion of bridging cultures, [these] stories weave around one another in a rhythmic, engaging palette of language and characters sure to remain with the reader. --Booklist"

[A] captivating and poetic collection. --Library Journal"

From the Back Cover:

With this highly praised collection of short fiction, Lorna Goodison demonstrates why she may be one of literature's best-kept secrets. In the Pushcart Prize-winning title story, humble Dottie thinks her luck has turned when she meets Frenchie, the best-looking, if not most reliable, man in the whole of Jamaica. In "The Helpweight," an accomplished woman must bear the burden of an old flame's renewed affections when he returns from a life abroad with his Irish bride in tow. And in "Henry," a young boy turned out of his house to make way for his mother's lover sells roses on the street to survive. On a whim, he bites off a bloom, which he can feel burning inside his mouth like a red pepper light, hoping it will take root and beautify his own life. Poetically rendered, these and over a dozen other evocative stories create a world in which pride can nourish a soul or be its ruin and where people are in turn uplifted and undone by love.

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