Bark - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Lorrie Moore (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A collection of stories by one of America's most beloved and admired short-story writers that explores the passage of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and hilarious pitfalls to reveal an exquisite, singular wisdom. - "Uncanny.... Moving.... A powerful collection." --The Washington Post

Here are people beset, burdened, buoyed; protected by raising teenage children; dating after divorce; facing the serious illness of a longtime friend; setting forth on a romantic assignation abroad, having it interrupted mid-trip, and coming to understand the larger ramifications and the impossibility of the connection ... stories that show people coping with large dislocation in their lives, with risking a new path to answer the desire to be in relation--to someone....

Review Quotes

A New York Times Notable Book
A Washington Post Notable Book
A Best Book of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Financial Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, BookPage
A Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize Finalist

"Uncanny. . . . Moving. . . . A powerful collection." --The Washington Post

"Moore's one of the country's most admired writers. . . . [Bark] shows off a true advance of Moore's powers and offers some first-rate reading pleasure." --NPR

"Heartbreaking. . . . Mordantly funny. . . . Takes us on a rare flight of self-transcendence. . . . Moments of recognition bring jolts like electric shocks." --The New York Review of Books

"Wonderful. . . . Masterful. . . . Profound. . . . Not a single false note." --USA Today

"[Moore] deftly paints with negative space, releasing tremendous poignancy. . . . A vibrant and nimble display of Moore's signature wit." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Ms Moore's writing glides. She describes the mundane with precision and grace. . . . Bark simultaneously honours and regrets the messiness of human relationships. Ms Moore is like one of her characters: 'sternness in one eye and gentleness in the other.'" --The Economist

"One of the finest short story writers in the country." --Los Angeles Review of Books

"[Moore's] writing contains multitudes, mixed in exacting proportions, which is to say: this potpourri is utterly and totally unique. . . . There really is no one quite like her." --The New Republic

"Lorrie Moore still dazzles. . . . These powerfully, almost savagely, human stories shine with a spirit of playfulness and the logic of love." --O, The Oprah Magazine

"[Bark is] a book to which people will refer back to understand life as we lived it in the past ten years." --Salon

"Her stories, her stories, are perfect." --Slate

"Here is why one reads Moore: the terse, true polish of her emotional wisdom." --The Boston Globe

"Probably no writer since Nabokov has been as language-obsessed as Moore. . . . [Bark] lets us contemplate and savor just what makes her work unique." --The New York Times Book Review (cover)

"Irresistible." --Minneapolis Star Tribune

"100% brilliant, as usual. . . . Moore has come to enjoy the unusual distinction of being just about the darkest light writer around. Unhappiness, heartbreak, illness, grief, disappointment--who'd have thought they could be so much fun?" --Geoff Dyer, The Observer (London)

"Extraordinary. . . . Moore's construction of a sentence, a paragraph, a page, is rarely less than exhilarating. . . . There is a moral nobility to Moore's assertion that even the least brilliant of lives deserve to be brilliantly documented. . . . Moore does not make us feel better; she hurts us. But she hurts us in vital, generous ways, and it is testament to the brilliance of her writing that we let her." --The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"If you adore Lorrie Moore, as so many of us do, you'll find much to enjoy in her new collection. . . . All the sparkly balls are in play--puns, politics, pop culture details, sometimes all at once." --Newsday

"If you had to criticize one thing about Lorrie Moore--and I don't know why you would, because she's awesome--it might be that her humor and her world-weary sense of the absurd are almost too distinctive. . . . But I don't have the heart to really complain about any of this: I've been addicted to Moore's voice for a long time now and want more, not less, of it." --Entertainment Weekly

"Laugh-out-loud funny. . . . Reading the stories one after another is a reminder of her uncanny ability to sum up, in a sentence or two, the truths that might take a lifetime to grasp." --Houston Chronicle

"Lorrie Moore's writing is strange and wonderful. It should be among anyone's top reasons for being alive." --PopMatters

"A vital work of literature." --Electric Literature

About the Author

LORRIE MOORE is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.