| Description: |
|
Product Description
With all the poignancy, hilarity, and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her fiction, Ellen Gilchrist introduces a gallery of unforgettable characters-Southern women and men whose off-kilter lives are delicately revealed by the author's keen and forgiving gaze. This jubilantly acclaimed collection affirms anew why, as the Washington Post puts it, 'Ellen Gilchrist should be declared a national treasure.' - Since winning the National Book Award for Victory Over Japan in 1985, Gilchrist has established a large and devoted readership. - Rhoda Manning, one of Gilchrist's most beloved recurring characters, returns in several of these stories-as a child, as a divorced mother of three sons, and as an older woman who recalls the curse and blessing of being Big Dudley's only daughter.
Amazon.com Review
The crisp, melancholy stories in I, Rhoda Manning, Go Hunting with My Daddy showcase Ellen Gilchrist's many gifts: her effortless prose, her empathy and emotional depth, her irrepressible optimism. In the title story, 5-year-old Rhoda Manning (a recurring character in Gilchrist's books) is allowed to go hunting with her father armed with a BB gun. The reader waits for the gun to hit the wrong target, but it never does. The story is about a disaster-free afternoon, although in "Entropy"--told from Rhoda's point of view when she is "old and gray"--we realize disasters arrive in many guises. Other stories enter the lives of Arab terrorists, pregnant teenage girls, hairdressers, and high-school football players. Gilchrist makes each character human--even the terrorist, bitten by bugs and dreaming of Allah as he waits in a tree for his target to appear. Throughout the collection, Gilchrist’s voice is soothing and trustworthy, full of hypnotic cadences: "Remorse fell like rain from heaven. The golden rain trees were putting out their leaves." --Ellen Williams
|
