Flying Leap: Stories
Budnitz's debut collection drops the reader onto familiar terrain and then twists the expected like a fun-house mirror. Whether set in a hospital waiting room, in a strange new city, or around a family dinner table, the 23 stories radiate with hidden truths and unanticipated revelations. In "Train," for example, we are made privy to the lives of several people on a crowded New York City subway. "We're sitting in a car full of stories," the 26-year-old-Budnitz writes, and one after another, we marvel as snippets of everyday life are explicated and pondered. "Herschel" takes us back, way back, to the "Old Country" and a time when an aged bread maker molded babies out of dough. "Yellville" places Russell, a teenager from rural Arkansas, into a middle-class family who have no idea how to deal with someone from the lower strata. Both humorous and politically pointed, these often surreal stories are explicitly feminist and pro-working class. A yearning for human connection and a reverence for the offbeat makes them both entertaining and touching. Highly recommended for all libraries.?Eleanor J. Bader, New Sch. for Social Research, New YorkCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.