The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Davis, Lydia

ISBN 10: 0374270600 / ISBN 13: 9780374270605

Published by N.Y.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009

About this Item

1st printing. Book is unread; DJ shows a touch of edgewear. Autographed by Davis on title page at a New York event (see photos). A major work, uncommon signed. 733 pages. Seller Inventory # 3780

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Publisher: N.Y.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Publication Date: 2009

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Lydia Davis is one of our most original and influential writers. She has been called “an American virtuoso of the short story form” (Salon) and “one of the quiet giants . . . of American fiction” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, for the first time, Davis’s short stories will be collected in one volume, from the groundbreakingBreak It Down (1986) to the 2007 National Book Award nominee Varieties of Disturbance.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is an event in American letters.

Review:

Rich, deeply involving, extraordinary, remarkable (The Times)

I loved these stories. They are so well-written, with such clarity of thought and precision of language. Excellent (Evening Standard)

Brilliant, exciting, thrilling, extremely funny (Daily Telegraph)

Davis is a magician. Few writers working now make the words on the page matter more

Big rejoicing: Lydia Davis has won the Man Booker International prize. Never did a book award deliver such a true match-winning punch. Best of all, a new audience will read her now and find her wit, her vigour and rigour, her funniness, her thoughtfulness, and the precision of form, which mark Davis out as unique.

Daring, excitingly intelligent and often wildly comic [she] reminds you, in a world that likes to bandy its words about, what words such as economy, precision and originality really mean. This is a writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust.

A two-liner from Davis, or a seemingly throwaway paragraph, will haunt. What looks like a game will open to deep seriousness; what looks like philosophy will reveal playfulness, tragicomedy, ordinariness; what looks like ordinariness will ask you to look again at Davis's writing. In its acuteness, it always asks attentiveness, and it repays this by opening up to its reader like possibility, or like a bush covered in flowerheads.

She's a joy. There's no writer quite like her.

(Ali Smith)