In the Gloaming - (Stories) by Alice Elliott Dark (Paperback)

About the Book

This collection of stories presents a fictional terrain of secrets, estrangements, and losses that are intrinsic in Dark's characters' lives. The title story is an intense tale of a mother tending to her dying son. In "Maniacs", two sisters love the same man. And in "Close", a young father-to-be visits his childhood home and contemplates escape from his wife.

Book Synopsis

From the author of Think of England and Fellowship Point, a captivating collection of stories--the title piece successfully made into an HBO film--about the complex relationships between lovers, spouses, neighbors, and family members. By turns funny, sad, and disturbing, these are stories of remarkable power.

When the austere and moving title story of this collection appeared in The New Yorker in 1993, it inspired two memorable film adaptations, and John Updike selected it for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. In these ten stories, Alice Elliott Dark visits the fictional town of Wynnemoor and its residents, present and past, with skill, compassion, and wit.

Review Quotes

Elle Wise, funny, and wrenching, Dark's stories illuminate the hidden corners of her complex characters' lives, catching them in the painfully comic acts of being themselves.

Anne Stephenson USA Today Dark...writes with great sympathy for the complexity of ordinary lives. [H]er stories are like the proverbial iceberg: We look at the tip but are compelled to think about all that's hidden below.

Jennie Yabroff San Francisco Chronicle [Dark] can do a certain kind of writing about a certain kind of love, and break her reader's heart without seeming to try.

Joyce Carol Oates The New York Review of Books Beautifully composed...each story exudes the gravitas of a radically distilled novel.

About the Author

Alice Elliott Dark is the author the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, as well as two collections of short stories, In the Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry: Prize Stories, among others. Her award-winning story "In the Gloaming" was made into two films and was chosen for inclusion in Best American Stories of the Century. Dark is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is an associate professor at Rutgers-Newark in the MFA program.