We So Seldom Look on Love: Stories - Softcover

Gowdy, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883642000 ISBN 13: 9781883642006

Publisher: Zoland Books, 1998

Synopsis

Acclaimed throughout the world, and a best-selling writer in her native Canada, Barbara Gowdy now follows her breakthrough novel, Fallen Angels, with this remarkable collection of fiction - fiction that pushes us past the limits of convention into lives that are fantastic and heartbreakingly real. The subjects of We So Seldom Look on Love are people whose interests (and sometimes their very anatomy) make them total outsiders in human society; yet every story is written with such tenderness and empathy that there is never a moment of freak-show voyeurism. Through these remarkable pieces you are allowed fully to know another human being - a human being the likes of whom you may never be allowed to meet in real life. The author's talent is so sure and her insight so strong that she makes even the most unusual (or previously unimaginable) person become familiar, even intimate. Barbara Gowdy's stories make you feel in the presence of a staggering, wholly original talent who is writing something completely unlike any thing you've ever read before. If We So Seldom Look on Love is your first experience with Ms. Gowdy's work, you will utterly enjoy that wonderful feeling that so rarely happens: The discovery of a new voice and an extraordinary writer.

About this title

Review:

"Barbara Gowdy invites herself, and us, into taboo territory where love and disgust mingle freely. Nothing seems to hold back the narrative flow, not propriety, not politics, not even that ambiguity we once called good taste . . . Gowdy writes about the macabre, but she writes like an angel." -- Carol Shields, Boston Globe

From the Back Cover:

This powerful, disturbing and entirely original collection of prize-winning tales is a compelling exploration of all that is seemingly unnatural and outlandish. Populated by an assortment of freaks, Siamese twins, exhibitionists, necrophiles and transsexuals, these bizarre stories are shot through with Gowdy's humorous, life-enhancing, essentially festive sympathy for the quirks and quiddities found in life's carnival. The title story has now been filmed as the major motion picture 'Kissed', directed by Lynne Stopkewich and starring molly Parker and Peter Outerbridge.

'Barbara Gowdy surprises and delights; she also – which is rarer – gives us moments which are at the same time preposterous and strangly moving.'
MARGARET ATWOOD

'These are unsettling and profoundly moving stories to be read, and reread, and then to be dreamt upon ... this is a remarkable and uplifting book.'
TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

'Barbara Gowdy has a sharp, surreal edge and a beguiling sense of humour; her prose comes from a darker place whose other residents include Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro ... a subtle and original talent.'
OBSERVER

'[Gowdy] deserves to be catapulted into the front rank of Canadian novelists.'
LITERARY REVIEW

About this edition

• Publisher: Zoland Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1883642000
• ISBN 13: 9781883642006
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256