This wicked tongue : stories / Elise Levine.
"In the dark and eerie style of Joy Williams and Karen Russell, this character-driven collection from Elise Levine is tough and tender, filled with complicated people longing for independence from the scripts of the past. From a sniping road-tripping couple in the desert to a cantankerous divinity-school candidate on the prairies to a frustrated cop in a cave in the south of France, This Wicked Tongue showcases the gritty and the sublime."-- Publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781771962797 (paperback)
- Physical Description: 173 pages ; 20 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: Windsor, Ontario : Biblioasis, 2019.
- Copyright: ©2019.
Content descriptions
General Note: | "A John Metcalf book." |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Interpersonal relations > Fiction |
Genre: | Short stories. |
Available copies
- 2 of 2 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Terrace Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 2 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Terrace Public Library | LEV (Text) | 35151001088780 | Adult Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2019 April #2
Twelve stories that probe the long shadow of trauma, whether historical or familial. We are all products of our pasts; the wounded children we were shape the adults we become. Toronto-born writer Levine (Blue Field, 2017, etc.) has the most success exploring this idea in her more conventional, character-driven stories such as "The Association" and "As Such," which both feature Martin. In the first, Martin is just 11, a computer whiz who is navigating his parents' divorce and his mother's controlling personality. (She gives him two Bengal cats but makes him keep them in a tiny bathroom.) In the second, grown-up Martin, now a successful scientist married to a composer, still struggles with the "boy-shithead" he used to be. His efforts to silence that angry childish voice are affecting, and we understand why he freaks out over his husband's desire to have a child. Elsewhere, however, some of Levine's characters are so cold and nasty it's difficult to care about them (or the stories) even when we learn about their troubled pasts. Em, a hospice counselor, inwardly mocks the dying and their families even while she's supposedly ministering to them ("The Riddles of Aramaic"), and Eddie, a venomous old Jewish man, reflects without much regret on the harm he caused his wife and daughter ("Death and the Maidens"). Levine has a poet's command of language. Her taut, musical sentences make some of the stories' small details exquisite. In "This Wicked Tongue," which follows a young woman on a religious journey, a donkey "twitches his flied flank," a "thrush throats," and "a spider webs her prey." Sometimes, however, Levine's restraint is too severe, and her characters feel insubstantial and ultimately unknowable. A stylish, experimental collection, but readers might yearn for Levine to show more compassion for her damaged characters. Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.