Sống Mòn tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

Gloria Winters wintersg122e94 — At Home Anywhere, a collection of four short stories by Mary Hoffman, was the 2010 New Rivers Press Many Voices Project award winner. MVP judge, Leif Enger, surely saw the promise of Hoffman’s gritty and minimalistic style. Hoffman’s work also exemplifies a fascinating movement over the course of the collection. The stories progress in style and mood as you read on. “Flat Earth Society” starts off the collection with a pessimistic view of contemporary society, and the stories gain momentum (in both tone and character interaction) from there. In “Flat Earth Society” we meet Bill Roubideau, a middle-aged man applying for welfare in Coney Island. Readers learn of Roubideau’s past afflictions with cocaine, his dark sexual past, and his lives in both New Orleans, and New York. This is perhaps Hoffman’s rawest selection included in the collection, and it gives us a sense of understanding of what it is to start life over from the bottom. From this story on, Hoffman’s characters – all different – maneuver society and contemporary life in progressively better ways. Hoffman employs a close third person narration in each of these stories, which puts up a veil between the stories’ protagonists and the readers. “Flat Earth Society” is a thoroughly internal story with little character interaction, though the interactions that do occur are important markers in the plot. “Moths” offers much more character interaction, and allows the reader to have a better sense of Hoffman’s character motives. “Moths” is not a particularly standout story from the collection, but the dialogue is effective, and well chosen. This being said, Hoffman’s standout story is certainly the one that lends its title to the collection. “At Home Anywhere” is a story about reaching out to each other after the panic of 9/11. In this story, Douglas is enchanted with a Pakistani-owned market, and becomes a regular visitor of the store. After 9/11, he begins to worry about his connections to the store, though the owner approaches him to ask for a favor. This story is elegantly crafted and contains many lovely turns. Overall, At Home Anywhere is a collection of stories that get a reader thinking, and wanting to ponder life at every stage.