The Collected Stories of Grace Paley

Description

Here are all Grace Paley's classic stories in one volume. From her first book THE LITTLE DISTURBANCES OF MAN (1959), to ENORMOUS CHANGES AT THE LAST MINUTE (1974) and LATER THE SAME DAY (1985), Grace Paley's quirky, boisterous characters and rich use of language have won her readers' hearts and secured her place as one of America's most accomplished short story writers. Her stories are united by her signature interweaving of personal and political truths, her extraordinary capacity for empathy and her pointed depiction of the small and large events that make up daily life.

Grace Paley was born in New York in 1922 and grew up amidst the vivid life of immigrant New York. She had little formal education - she was too busy writing poetry and reading voraciously to finish school - and began to write fiction in the fifties. She is a pacifist and has devoted enormous energy to the anti-war movements, particularly Vietnam.

'Paley is as clever a mimic as Philip Roth, as cheerfully zany and aleatory in her vision of New York as Christina Stead, as serendipitous as Donald Bartheleme, but her unladylike gutsiness and friendliness are nonpareil' EDMUND WHITE, OBSERVER 'This is a collection full of energy and stunning, quiet innovation ... it spills over with contempt, raucous humour, sadness and generosity. In it, life and language are synonymous, and there is no higher praise. What a wonderful book' ALI SMITH, SCOTSMAN 'An understanding of loneliness, lust, selfishness and fatigue that is splendidly comic and unladylike' PHILIP ROTH 'Largely set within the same small close-knit community in New York's Lower East Side ... ultimately what's at stake for Paley is whether to believe in the comic possibility of continuance or the tragic inevitablity of ending. Grace Paley's is an exceptional voice in contemporary American literature' KASIA BODDY, GUARDIAN 'A voice like no one else's: funny, sad, lean, modest, energetic, acute' SUSAN SONTAG 'Some of the most important and lasting stories of the second half of the century' TLS 'Paley relishes the possibilities that exist between beginnings and endings, birth and death' LITERARY REVIEW