Invite (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
Description
Intense inner and outer monologues resonate through the lives of Glen Pourciau’s characters. We hear the voice of a man who will not stop talking, the voice of a man who does not want to talk, the voice of a man stunned into silence by his sudden awareness of a desire he did not know he felt, and the voice of a man struggling to accept his imminent death.
Inhabiting an outwardly bland landscape that overlays internal questions and recurring confusion, the narrators of these ten intensely felt stories strive to understand their varied predicaments. Conflicts with neighbors arise, troubling memories return, suspicions and fears lead people into isolated corners as distances open up inside them and around them. And in those open spaces, the sometimes humorous, sometimes obsessive voices continue their quest. In the final story, “Deep Wilderness,” the voices seem to fragment as a family comes apart.
Praise for Invite (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
“In these wonderful, fascinating stories you'll hear the sadness of Carver and the sly play of Barthelme, but mainly Glen Pourciau finds a voice all his own, an obsessive voice hunting down an elusive broken piece of our weird modern American life. The beauty is in their mundane self-consciousness, in the lonely ruminations, shared by everyone, that don't resolve our questions but only drive us further into a mysterious and haunting isolation.”—Charles D’Ambrosio, author, The Dead Fish Museum and Orphans