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Title/Author

Emerald City
and Other Stories

Jennifer Egan

Average Review Rating Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)
Book Details

Publisher : Corsair

Published : 2012

Copyright : Jennifer Egan 1993

ISBN-10 : PB 1-78033-121-5
ISBN-13 : PB 978-1-78033-121-8

Publisher's Write-Up

These eleven masterful stories - the first collection from acclaimed author Jennifer Egan - deal with loneliness and longing, regret and desire. Egan's characters, models and housewives, bankers and schoolgirls, are united by their search for something outside their own realm of experience. They set out from locations as exotic as China and Bora Bora, as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan, or as familiar as suburban Illinois to seek their own transformations. Elegant and poignant, the stories in Emerald City are seamless evocations of self-discovery.

About the Author:
Jennifer Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and St John's College, Cambridge. She is the author of three novels, The Invisible Circus, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award, and the bestselling The Keep, and a short story collection, Emerald City. She has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and Ploughshares, among others, and her journalism appears frequently in the New York Times Magazine. A Visit from the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2011.

'Lustrous... These stories sparkle with Egan's fresh imagery and precise renderings of mood and place... A writer of tremendous intelligence and grace.'

The Philadelphia Inquirer

'Immensely appealing... Told with dazzling insight and emotional daring.'

Elle
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Reader Reviews

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Review by Ben Macnair (310114) Rating (7/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Rating 7/10
The author Jennifer Egan made her name with a series of critically acclaimed, commercially successful novels, such as A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Invisible Circus so her story-telling talents have been honed by years of practice.

It is this facet of her talent that is allowed to shine the brightest in this small collection of eleven perfectly formed tales. We are let, for a short time into the lives of a number of characters, from the businessman in Why China? who sees the man who swindled him and countless other small firms out of money, and follows him, dragging his whole family in his wake. In Sacred Heart self harm bonds two disparate girls together, whilst in other stories we meet dissatisfied models, bankers, housewives, all looking for something to make their existences complete.

The book is a globe trotter’s delight, taking the reader from China to Bora Bora to life in big cities and small towns, places where everyone knows your names, to places where people don’t know their neighbours. It is a book about small lives, and big dreams, people wanting to escape, but trapped by the feeling of wanting to belong.

This is a fine collection, and if you enjoyed Egan’s other work, this is well worth a read.
Ben Macnair (31st January 2014)

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