The Star Cafe & Other Stories - Hardcover

Caponegro, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068419113X ISBN 13: 9780684191133

Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990

Synopsis

In a debut collection of short fiction, the author explores love's gray area between fantasy and reality, a troubled preadolescence, and the relationship between love and language

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Though uneven, this collection of three short stories and a novella nonetheless marks the arrival of a gifted writer. In the stories, which have appeared previously in a small press edition and in literary magazines, the author's ambition overmatches her craft: "Tales from the Next Village," cast as a delicate Chinese fable, is ultimately jejune and Western in its effects; the title story concerns the elaborate, tiresome seduction of a college girl by what seems to be her own over-heated imagination; and "Materia Prima" is a coming-of-age melodrama made arch by stage directions and stilted dialogue. However, the previously unpublished novella, "Sebastian," is a sharply focused psychological portrait of a self-possessed Englishman who, during the course of a day bedeviled by mishap, sees his life lurch toward chaos. The author convincingly renders the artsy concerns of both Sebastian and his mate, Sarah, without diminishing the reader's affection for them. The inventive wordplay that conveys the glib side of the characters' relationship gains in resonance as the story unfolds, and suggests the key to understanding the novella's quirky, fictional world.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 068419113X
• ISBN 13: 9780684191133
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180