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    Three Short Novels: The Son, The Lights of Earth, and The Conference of Victims
    Unavailable
    Three Short Novels: The Son, The Lights of Earth, and The Conference of Victims
    Unavailable
    Three Short Novels: The Son, The Lights of Earth, and The Conference of Victims
    Ebook380 pages6 hours

    Three Short Novels: The Son, The Lights of Earth, and The Conference of Victims

    By Gina Berriault

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Gina Berriault’s work as a storywriter of great psychological empathy and extraordinary elegance and subtlety was celebrated widely at the end of her life. Her collection Women in Their Beds, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, the National Books Critics Prize in fiction and the Rea Prize for lifetime achievement. She has few equals in the history of the American short story. Over the course of her career she also wrote several novels and novellas, and we have here a collection of the three finest, which have each been published before as separate volumes but which have been out of print and unavailable for many years. They each can be counted among her finest work.

    The Son was first published in 1962, The Conference of Victims in 1966. And The Lights of Earth, first published in 1984, stands easily alongside her greatest achievements. All three are stories about women. In The Son, Vivian believes men run the world and finds meaning only in erotic love. As she envies her son’s future, and wishing to share it, she seduces him. Naomi, in Conference of Victims, is thrown nearly out of her mind by her brother’s suicide. Only her need to love keeps her alive. When it was first published, Andre Dubus said of The Lights of Earth, Like her stories, it’s masterly. Its central character is a woman, Ilona Lewis, who confronts loss of earthly love. But Ilona’s experience is far more complex than losing a man because he has become a celebrity. It involves the hearts of all of us seeking the lights of earth, the soul’s blessing in its long, dark night.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCounterpoint
    Release dateMar 18, 2014
    ISBN9781619023604
    Unavailable
    Three Short Novels: The Son, The Lights of Earth, and The Conference of Victims

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    Reviews for Three Short Novels

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    • 3/5
      'Nathan Coulter', 'Remembering', and 'A World Lost'
    • 4/5
      A theology professor once mentioned to me that "land" is the one major theological category of the Old Testament that has no obvious analogue in the new covenant. Land was central to Israel's plight. Slavery in foreign land, wandering in desert land, entrance to the promised land, exile from said land, and return. Everything hinges on that land.The idea of land has captivated the mind of Berry just as fully as it haunted the mind of any ancient Israelite. Despite the fact that I'm a northern wilderness camper and Berry's a Kentucky farmer, his tie to the land resonates through the fiction he writes, eliciting harmonic overtones within.His Three Short Novels are all thoughtful works. He dives deep into the soul of his characters and brings their lives to life with an economy of words. Whether we're watching Nathan Coulter grow up, feeling the frustration of Andy as the lone dissonant in a conference on "The Future of the American Food System," or piecing together the lost life of a murdered uncle, the reader is beckoned to enter each life deeply.The most poignant moment in all three novels was Andy's vision of his town resurrected."He sees that they are the dead, and they are alive. He sees that he lives in eternity as he lives in time, and nothing is lost. Among the people of that town, he sees men and women he remembers, and men and women remembered in memories he remembers, and they do not look as he ever saw or imagined them. The young are no longer young, nor the old old. They appear as children corrected and clarified; they have the luminous vividness of new grass after fire. And yet they are mature as ripe fruit. And yet they are flowers" (221).None of Berry's characters find their resurrection along an easy path, though. Everyone bears the marks of their journey—whether it's a missing hand or the memory of an exploding bird on the wing. Maybe this is why Berry's characters are so real. They're created by their suffering."That light can come into this world only as love, and love can enter only by suffering" (326).Berry's characters stay with you. His three short sketches are at the same time epic and concise. When you read Berry you feel a human connection with his creation and their connection to their beloved land.