Harpo's Garden and Other Stories - Softcover

Kenvin, Roger Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965663507 ISBN 13: 9780965663502

Publisher: July Blue Pr, 1997

Synopsis

Twelve short stories set on an island off the coast of Maine celebrating island virtues in all their realistic, humorous, and tragic aspects. One meets the sturdy permanent residents like Ben Whitefield, who runs the local ferry; Bennett Sims, crusty propietor of the General Store; Eleanor Loring, the Calvinistic piano teacher; Nick, the quirky gas station owner; Maurice Pelletier, town mortician, who knows all; and Grace Hamilton, the B & B owner with a mystery; plus the fascinating summer visitors like Jenny, Patrick, and Harpo Curtis, whose lives criss-cross many of these stories; Hartley Skeuse, the musical prodigy from Philadelphia; and amorous librarian Austria Noon, who pursues Patrick Curtis via Dr. Samuel Johnson, Mozart, Federico Fellini, and June Allyson's beef stew. Through birth, marriage, death, in all kinds of weather, including a rousing hurricane, Spanish Island comes vividly to life in all its Spartan beauty through Kenvin's prose.

About this title

About the Author:

Roger Lee Kenvin is the author of several collections of short stories, The Gaffer and Seven Fables, Harpo's Garden, The Cantabrigian Rowing Society's Saturday Night Bash, After the Silver Age, and a play, Krishnalight, published in India. A graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, he has an M.A. in English literature from Harvard, and an M.F.A. and D.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. He has lived and worked in Switzerland, India, and England, as well as in the United States. He enjoys reading his stories to audiences in universities, bookstores, schools, retirement communities, wherever there is interest, and has even read on the Queen Elizabeth 2 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and on the Vistafjord in the Pacific while El Nino howled outside.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

From "China"

"Miss Curtis," I would call out to Jenny on the phone. "How is John F. Kennedy doing in school?"

"Not as well as he should," she would reply. "He needs to do more work in Math. He only managed a C+ on the last exam."

"Thank you," I say. "I will speak to him about it. "Has Sophia Loren gotten off probation yet?"

"Yes," Jenny says. "In fact, she just got an A in Geography."

"Good," I reply. Our marbles were not just ordinary students. Many of them were very well-known people. Did you know that Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc both went to our school? Joan was valedictorian when she graduated.

About this edition

• Publisher: July Blue Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0965663507
• ISBN 13: 9780965663502
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 119