The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards: Stories - Hardcover

Boswell, Robert

3.74

234 ratings by Goodreads

9781555975241: The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards: Stories

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555975240 ISBN 13: 9781555975241

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2009

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An enthralling and wise new collection from the author of Century's Son and one of America's most respected writers

I was twenty-nine years old and wanted to change before I hit thirty. Clete and I developed a plan for me . . . a plan that would work all that summer and beyond. Even after I left the mountain, it stuck.

Robert Boswell's extraordinary range is on full display in this crackling new collection. Set mainly in small, gritty American cities no farther east than Chicago and as far west as El Paso, each of these stories is a world unto itself.

Two marriages end, one by death, the other by divorce, and the two wives, lifelong friends, become strangers to each other. A young man's obsession with visiting a fortune-teller leaves him nearly homeless. And in the unforgettable title story, a man dubbed Keen recounts the summer he spent on a mountain with his best friend, Clete, and a loose band of slackers, living in a borrowed house, abstaining from all drugs (other than mushrooms and beer)―and ultimately asking just what kind of harm we can do to one another.

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About the Author:

Robert Boswell is the author of five novels, two short-story collections, and a collection of essays. He teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University, the University of Houston, and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this imaginative story collection, author Boswell (Century's Son) examines the limits and losses of ordinary souls with technical mastery and profound sympathy. In No River Wide, a widowed woman visiting a longtime friend in Florida discovers that their friendship is over; her story unfolds in overlapping narratives that form a startling, resonant meditation on the nature of time. Another story finds a 30-something returning to his North Dakota home to identify the body of his missing mother; what he finds instead frees him from the long shadow of his embittered father. In the title story, a gang spends the summer squatting in the home of a vacationing family, with dire consequences; in Supreme Beings, a priest's attempts to intervene in the lives of three troubled youths lead him to confront personal and professional failure. Boswell conveys the sordid but hopeful inner lives of average people with insight and care; his shorter stories (Miss Famous, Skin Deep) showcase his pleasure in language and invention, and his longer tales pack the emotional weight of a novel. (May)
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