Synopsis
Sexy, tender, funny and haunting by turns, the stories in Alison MacLeod’s daring new collection are tales of lovers, would-be lovers and lovers gone wrong. Here we discover ECT patient Gloria, who falls for her anaesthetist, ‘Dr Numb’; the cerebral Nick, who chases after the heavily pregnant Katie at an Ikea sale; and the legendary lovers Heloise and Abelard re-imagined for the twenty-first century. With settings that range from a cheap Paris café to London’s Hayward Gallery, and from the Brighton seafront to the Nova Scotia coast, these stories are at times magical, at times grittily real, but always affecting.Reviews
» Submit a reviewCritic Review:
"Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction" is a potent and heady mix. Avoiding the perils of both overt erudition and sentimental whimsy, the whole is ably piloted by MacLeod’s total control of her material. Highly recommended. ' Time Out (London)
'MacLeod's fictions are modern indeed. They are fragmentary evocations of desire and its mysteries, passing glimpses into minds and hearts: tender; pierced; translucent.... [Her] characters are strong, and they are worth listening to...' Guardian
'Beautifully crafted, they range from brilliantly observed humour - customers stampeding in Ikea at the store's launch in Notes for a Chaotic Century - to the haunting and heart-rending - the tender elegy to a middle-aged love affair in Dirty Weekend. Immensely readable.' Big Issue
'MacLeod's range – spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal – is excitingly, imaginatively realised and unified by an awareness of the dark menace of love's uncertainty.' Metro (London)
Critic Review:
'Alison MacLeod is a strikingly original voice. Her stories create intimate worlds... and make the reader live in them with an intensity which is haunting, disturbing and above all beguiling.'
- Helen Dunmore, novelist, poet
'Her observations are brilliant... she continually makes the ordinary shocking and the shocking marvelous and inevitable...These stories make compelling, humbling reading.'
- Sue Roe, critic
‘There’s a giddying range of things to think about in MacLeod’s collection of short stories, which range from gleeful comedy to aching tragedy. Desire in its many, sometimes disturbing, sometimes comic, forms fizzes through all of these stories, from a man who goes chasing after a pregnant woman in the midst of a riot at Ikea, to ECT patient Gloria who thrills to the presence of her anaesthetist, “Dr Numb” and a 19-year-old girl who finds herself erotically drawn to a man on his deathbed. There’s also a 21st century version of the harrowing tale of Heloise and Abelard retold through email exchanges. The collection is as formally inventive as it is original.'
- The Guardian (2008)
"Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction" is a potent and heady mix. Avoiding the perils of both overt erudition and sentimental whimsy, the whole is ably piloted by MacLeod’s total control of her material. Highly recommended.
- ' Time Out (London)
'MacLeod's fictions are modern indeed. They are fragmentary evocations of desire and its mysteries, passing glimpses into minds and hearts: tender; pierced; translucent.... [Her] characters are strong, and they are worth listening to...'
- Guardian
'Beautifully crafted, they range from brilliantly observed humour - customers stampeding in Ikea at the store's launch in Notes for a Chaotic Century - to the haunting and heart-rending - the tender elegy to a middle-aged love affair in Dirty Weekend. Immensely readable.'
- Big Issue
'MacLeod's range – spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal – is excitingly, imaginatively realised and unified by an awareness of the dark menace of love's uncertainty.'
- Metro (London)
Product details
Format :
Paperback
ISBN: 9780141016061
Size : 129 x 198mm
Pages : 224
Published : 27 Sep 2007
Publisher : Penguin
Other formats for Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction:
» ePub eBook: eBook : £7.00
Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction
£8.99
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