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We live in water : stories

by Walter, Jess, 1965-

Format: Print Book 2013
Availability: Available at 6 Libraries 7 of 7 copies

Available (7)
Location Collection Call #
CLP - East Liberty Fiction Collection FICTION Walter
Location  CLP - East Liberty
 
Collection  Fiction Collection
 
Call Number  FICTION Walter
 
 
CLP - Homewood Fiction Collection FICTION Walter
Location  CLP - Homewood
 
Collection  Fiction Collection
 
Call Number  FICTION Walter
 
 
CLP - Main Library First Floor - Short Stories FICTION Walter
Location  CLP - Main Library
 
Collection  First Floor - Short Stories
 
Call Number  FICTION Walter
 
 
CLP - Main Library First Floor - Fiction Stacks FICTION Walter
Location  CLP - Main Library
 
Collection  First Floor - Fiction Stacks
 
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Northern Tier Regional Library Fiction FIC WALTE
Location  Northern Tier Regional Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  FIC WALTE
 
 
Penn Hills Library Fiction WALTER
Location  Penn Hills Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  WALTER
 
 
Shaler North Hills Library Fiction WALTER
Location  Shaler North Hills Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  WALTER
 
 

Summary

ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, the first collection of short fiction from Jess Walter--a suite of diverse and searching stories about personal struggle and diminished dreams, all of them marked by the wry wit, keen eye, and generosity of spirit that has made him a bookseller and reader favorite

These twelve stories--published over the last five years in Harper's, The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney's, Playboy, and other publications--veer from comic tales of love to social satire to suspenseful crime fiction, from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, from a condemned casino in Las Vegas to a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho. This is a world of lost fathers and redemptive conmen, of meth tweakers on desperate odysseys and men committing suicide by fishing.

We Live in Water is a darkly comic, heartfelt collection of stories from a "ridiculously talented writer" (New York Times), "one of the freshest voices in American literature" (Dallas Morning News).

Contents
Anything helps
We live in water
Thief
Can a corn
Virgo
Helpless little things
Please
Don't eat cat
The new frontier
The brakes
The wolf and the wild
Wheelbarrow kings
Statistical abstract for my hometown of Spokane, Washington.
Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "*Starred Review* This is the first collection of short stories, all of which have appeared previously in Harper's and McSweeney's, among other literary publications, from the much-acclaimed, best-selling Walter (Beautiful Ruins, 2012). With their visceral depictions of the homeless, the bereft, and the marginalized, often presented with a signature blend of wicked humor and heartbreaking tenderness, Walter's intense stories speak directly to the contemporary American experience. In Anything Helps, a homeless father has lost his wife to a heroin overdose and his son to social services. Determined to buy the latest Harry Potter novel for his son, he brings a practiced eye to his begging, opting to go to cardboard. In the title story, Walter expertly uses the tropes of crime fiction to tell the grim story of an unrepentant gambler who steals from the wrong person, and his young son, who is forever haunted by his father's disappearance. In Don't Eat Cat, Walter turns to zombie fiction to unleash a hilarious satire of political correctness (I'm not one of those reactionaries, but hiring zombies for food service? I just think that's wrong ). Wildly entertaining and thought-provoking fiction from a prodigiously talented writer.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Title notwithstanding, most of the characters in Walter's short stories live in Spokane, Ore., but they are often under water, or nearly so. Spokane, as Walter makes clear, bears little relationship to Portland or Seattle, the Pacific Northwest's name-brand cities. There are no locavores here, and the one potential latte drinker is stuck in Spokane doing his court-mandated community service and prefers scotch, anyway. Walter (Beautiful Ruins) writes-beautifully-about hard luck divorced dads, addicts, con artists, working men trying to keep things together, and a few zombies who've made the Seattle of the future look a lot like the Spokane of the present, which Walter describes as a place where, no matter how big your house is, "you're never more than three blocks from a bad neighborhood." Both "Anything Helps" and "Don't Eat Cat" (rule #1 for zombies trying to hold down a job and an apartment) are included in 2012 best-of anthologies, but good as they are, the star is the title story, a heartbreaker set in a formerly seedy, now touristed part of Idaho. Darkly funny, sneakily sad, these stories are very, very good. You know the way Web sites recommend books by saying if you liked this, you'll like that? The algorithm for this debut collection is straightforward: if you like to read, you'll like this book. Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins and Associates. (Feb. 12) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved."
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Additional Information
Subjects Short stories, American.
Short stories.
Publisher New York :Harper Perennial,2013
Edition 1st ed.
Language English
Description 177 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN 9780061926624 (pbk.)
0061926620 (pbk.)
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