[OZO]⋙ Descargar Gratis Treats Lara Williams 9781910449707 Books

Treats Lara Williams 9781910449707 Books

Download As PDF : Treats Lara Williams 9781910449707 Books

Treats Lara Williams 9781910449707 Books

Lara Williams’debut collection of fiction is a treat – a cornucopia of stories dealing with mostly late twenty-somethings dealing with life, love and that complicated thing we call adulthood and try to make sense of in our own muddling ways.
In some ways Williams’ voice reminded me of the stories in another debut story collection, Self-Help by the American writer Lorrie Mooore (published in 1985). In part that’s because both use the second-person “you” voice to devastatingly, witty effect; and because both are charting the terrain of the uncertain, sometimes randomly, haphazard first decade of adulthood.
Williams hails from across the pond and many of her stories are set in Manchester, where she makes her home. These are mainly stories about dating, failed and failing relationships, the peculiar navigation of life as we are just finding our voice, and finding out what it is we may want from life. A question that is never really answered perhaps, no matter how far we journey.
Some of the stand-outs include ‘One of Those Life Things’ in which a young woman exits her twenties, breaks up with her boyfriend and then finds out she is pregnant. With the help of her best friend, she tries to decide what to do about this life growing in her: “She grapples for words like confetti in the breeze. There are no words for this basic animal trauma.”
In the elegant, but heart-breaking’ This Small Written Thing’ the couple Joseph and Flora try to navigate a long-distance relationship when Joseph finds a job in London. The ending is clear, but they try nonetheless to struggle through what’s expected, love has its own rules: “The performance of love and the fire of it; an endless negotiation; a series of audience asides, of controlled explosions.”
The vignette ‘Dates’ is a delightful, droll look at dating: ‘Dust shadow over your eyelids, a shade with some gorgeous caloric name, blink as it loosens to cinders...Dating is an art, and like everything else, it is a bit hit and miss.’ Touché.
In the equally delightful’ The Getting of the Cat’ Williams shines a light on a single woman acquiring a cat, while in ‘As Understood by the Women’ a man understand his marriage will unravel even before he’s walked down the aisle. ‘Tributaries’, which ends the collection, is a bittersweet look at a burgeoning romance, but while, once more, love dies in the water, there’s an acceptance of loss, almost a welcoming of it.
Even in the bleakest of stories, Williams’ earlier mentioned wit shines through, lifting these stories beyond sometimes sad scenarios, bringing a wry, sometimes droll effect to these short stories. Ranging in length from a few pages to a few thousand words, Williams’ characters leap off the page in full technicolour; she’s certainly a writer to watch out for.


Tags : Treats [Lara Williams] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV><I>"It was the curse of the modern age, options; who needed options, when everything was essentially meaningless?"</I> So says one of the characters in this extraordinary debut collection. This fresh,Lara Williams,Treats,Freight Books,1910449709,Short Stories (Single Author),FICTION Literary,FICTION Short Stories (single author),Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction-Literary,GENERAL,General Adult,Great BritainBritish Isles,Literary

Treats Lara Williams 9781910449707 Books Reviews

Lara Williams’debut collection of fiction is a treat – a cornucopia of stories dealing with mostly late twenty-somethings dealing with life, love and that complicated thing we call adulthood and try to make sense of in our own muddling ways.
In some ways Williams’ voice reminded me of the stories in another debut story collection, Self-Help by the American writer Lorrie Mooore (published in 1985). In part that’s because both use the second-person “you” voice to devastatingly, witty effect; and because both are charting the terrain of the uncertain, sometimes randomly, haphazard first decade of adulthood.
Williams hails from across the pond and many of her stories are set in Manchester, where she makes her home. These are mainly stories about dating, failed and failing relationships, the peculiar navigation of life as we are just finding our voice, and finding out what it is we may want from life. A question that is never really answered perhaps, no matter how far we journey.
Some of the stand-outs include ‘One of Those Life Things’ in which a young woman exits her twenties, breaks up with her boyfriend and then finds out she is pregnant. With the help of her best friend, she tries to decide what to do about this life growing in her “She grapples for words like confetti in the breeze. There are no words for this basic animal trauma.”
In the elegant, but heart-breaking’ This Small Written Thing’ the couple Joseph and Flora try to navigate a long-distance relationship when Joseph finds a job in London. The ending is clear, but they try nonetheless to struggle through what’s expected, love has its own rules “The performance of love and the fire of it; an endless negotiation; a series of audience asides, of controlled explosions.”
The vignette ‘Dates’ is a delightful, droll look at dating ‘Dust shadow over your eyelids, a shade with some gorgeous caloric name, blink as it loosens to cinders...Dating is an art, and like everything else, it is a bit hit and miss.’ Touché.
In the equally delightful’ The Getting of the Cat’ Williams shines a light on a single woman acquiring a cat, while in ‘As Understood by the Women’ a man understand his marriage will unravel even before he’s walked down the aisle. ‘Tributaries’, which ends the collection, is a bittersweet look at a burgeoning romance, but while, once more, love dies in the water, there’s an acceptance of loss, almost a welcoming of it.
Even in the bleakest of stories, Williams’ earlier mentioned wit shines through, lifting these stories beyond sometimes sad scenarios, bringing a wry, sometimes droll effect to these short stories. Ranging in length from a few pages to a few thousand words, Williams’ characters leap off the page in full technicolour; she’s certainly a writer to watch out for.