November Storm

Fiction & Literature, Short Stories
Cover of the book November Storm by Robert Oldshue, University of Iowa Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Robert Oldshue ISBN: 9781609384524
Publisher: University of Iowa Press Publication: October 1, 2016
Imprint: University Of Iowa Press Language: English
Author: Robert Oldshue
ISBN: 9781609384524
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Publication: October 1, 2016
Imprint: University Of Iowa Press
Language: English

In each of the stories in Robert Oldshue’s debut collection, the characters want to be decent but find that hard to define.

In the first story, an elderly couple is told that delivery of their Thanksgiving dinner has been canceled due to an impending blizzard. Unwilling to have guests but nothing to serve them, they make a run to the grocery, hoping to get there and back before the snow, but crash their car into the last of their neighbors. In “The Receiving Line,” a male prostitute tricks a closeted suburban schoolteacher only to learn that the trick is on him. In “The Woman On The Road,” a twelve-year-old girl negotiates the competing demands of her faith and her family as she is bat mitzvahed in the feminist ferment of the 1980s. The lessons she learns are the lessons learned by a ten-year-old boy in “Fergus B. Fergus,” after which, in “Summer Friend,” two women and one man renegotiate their sixty-year intimacy when sadly, but inevitably, one of them gets ill. “The Home Of The Holy Assumption” offers a benediction. A quadriplegic goes missing at a nursing home. Was she assumed? In the process of finding out, all are reminded that caring for others, however imperfectly—even laughably—is the only shot at assumption we have.

In upstate New York, a November storm is one that comes early in the season. If it catches people off-guard, it can change them in the ways Oldshue’s characters are changed by different but equally surprising storms.
 

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In each of the stories in Robert Oldshue’s debut collection, the characters want to be decent but find that hard to define.

In the first story, an elderly couple is told that delivery of their Thanksgiving dinner has been canceled due to an impending blizzard. Unwilling to have guests but nothing to serve them, they make a run to the grocery, hoping to get there and back before the snow, but crash their car into the last of their neighbors. In “The Receiving Line,” a male prostitute tricks a closeted suburban schoolteacher only to learn that the trick is on him. In “The Woman On The Road,” a twelve-year-old girl negotiates the competing demands of her faith and her family as she is bat mitzvahed in the feminist ferment of the 1980s. The lessons she learns are the lessons learned by a ten-year-old boy in “Fergus B. Fergus,” after which, in “Summer Friend,” two women and one man renegotiate their sixty-year intimacy when sadly, but inevitably, one of them gets ill. “The Home Of The Holy Assumption” offers a benediction. A quadriplegic goes missing at a nursing home. Was she assumed? In the process of finding out, all are reminded that caring for others, however imperfectly—even laughably—is the only shot at assumption we have.

In upstate New York, a November storm is one that comes early in the season. If it catches people off-guard, it can change them in the ways Oldshue’s characters are changed by different but equally surprising storms.
 

More books from University of Iowa Press

Cover of the book Whitman Noir by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book An Infuriating American by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book The Farm at Holstein Dip by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Demands of the Dead by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Questions of Poetics by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Woman Suffrage and Citizenship in the Midwest, 1870-1920 by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Biting through the Skin by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Performing Whitely in the Postcolony by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Esther's Town by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Disturbing the Universe by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book From Androboros to the First Amendment by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book The Quack's Daughter by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book It's Just the Normal Noises by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Mass Authorship and the Rise of Self-Publishing by Robert Oldshue
Cover of the book Making Local Food Work by Robert Oldshue
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy