Last words of the Holy Ghost
By: Matt Cashion
Edition: First edition.
Series: Number 14 in the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction series; Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction series -- no. 14.
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 200
ISBN-13: 9781574416121
Subjects: Teenage boys; Man-woman relationships; Teenagers and adults; Fiction
Work titles: Short stories
Description: "Funny, heartbreaking, and real--these twelve stories showcase a dynamic range of voices belonging to characters who can't stop confessing. They are obsessive storytellers, disturbed professors, depressed auctioneers, gambling clergy. A fourteen-year-old boy gets baptized and speaks in tongues to win the love of a girl who ushers him into adulthood; a troubled insomniac searches the woods behind his mother's house for the 'awful pretty' singing that begins each midnight; a school-system employee plans a year-end party at the site of a child's drowning; a burned-out health-care administrator retires from New England to coastal Georgia and stumbles upon a life-changing moment inside Walmart. These big-hearted people--tethered to the places that shape them--survive their daily sorrows and absurdities with well-timed laughter; they slouch toward forgiveness, and they point their ears toward the Holy Ghost's last words"--Amazon.com, Nov. 6, 2015.
Table of contents: title: The girl who drowned at school that time --; title: Last words of the Holy Ghost --; title: Awful pretty --; title: A serious question --; title: Penmanship --; title: Chuck Langford Jr., depressed auctioneer, takes action --; title: Snell's law --; title: Nothing ruins a good story like an eyewitness --; title: Clarissa drives John Boy to the Jacksonville Airport --; title: Any idiot can feel pain --; title: What to do when your spouse is burning --; title: The funeral starts at two.