Airs of Providence

Erscheinungsjahr 2000
ISBN: 978-0-8018-6367-7
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 144 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 220 g

Reihe: Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction

Providence—a city named in the hope that a direct compliment to God might place Him under some sort of obligation to its inhabitants—provides Jean McGarry with the fertile ground of her comic and gritty, harsh and touching cycle of stories. Weaving in and out of Airs of Providence is a novella telling the story of April and Margery Flanaghan, two sisters trying to grow up in this neighborhood and doing only a so-so job of it. And it is a job, in a world not clearly made for anyone, but better suited to an older generation. Surrounded by nuns and priests, uncles and aunts, biddies and oddballs, April and Margery do their best to be normal. They practice their penmanship, babysit, go to a prom, and try to be up to date. But how even to look normal in a world where you are always running up against uncontrollable mood swings, mysterious infirmities, unexplained sorrows?

Over a period of thirty-five years, they sniff out neighborhood scandals, get an "earful" of what the others are up to, and rest secure behind their sets of double curtains in the knowledge that everything human and frail is on the outside, everything blameless and perfect on the inside. If the Airs of Providence are sometimes rough, they are always funny. They may be sad too, but it is a dry-eyed melancholy that is no relation—or perhaps just a poor relation—to the air of "Danny Boy."

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mcgarry, Jean

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Providence, 1954: Watch
Penmanship
2. Providence, 1956: Toy Box
Stayed Back
3. Providence, 1934: The House at the Beach
They Meet a Boy
4. Providence, 1970: Behind This Soft Eclipse
The Hospital: Seeing Him There Almost Dead
5. Providence, 1957: An Accident
The Babysitter
6. Providence, 1948: The Most Complimentary Thing
Margery's Prom
7. Providence, 1960: Cavities
One of Them Gets Married
8. Providence, 1966: Ducks and Lucks

Über Autor(innen)

Mcgarry, Jean
Jean McGarry teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Ocean State is her eighth book of fiction. Dream Date, Gallagher’s Travels, Home at Last, The Very Rich Hours, and Airs of Providence have also been published by Johns Hopkins. Her short stories have appeared in, among other publications, The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Boulevard, and The Southwest Review.

Jean McGarry teaches at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars in Baltimore, Maryland. Her previous books include Gallagher's Travels and The Very Rich Hours.