The business of naming things
By: Michael Coffey
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 207
ISBN-13: 9781934137864; 9781934137871
Copyright date: 2014
Subjects: Literary; Adoption & Fostering; FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS; Short stories; Family Life; Short Stories (single author); FICTION
Work titles: Short stories
Description: ""Riveting. vibrant and unsparing."--Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review) "Once I started reading these stories, I couldn't stop. They absorbed me thoroughly, with their taut narratives and evocative language-the language of a poet." -JAY PARINI, author of Jesus: The Human Face of God and The Last Station "Sherwood Anderson would recognize this world of lonely, longing characters, whose surface lives Coffey tenderly plumbs. These beautiful stories-spare, rich, wise and compelling-go to the heart." -FREDERIC TUTEN, author of Self Portraits: Fictions and Tintin in the New World "Whether [Coffey is] writing about a sinning priest or a man who's made a career out of branding or about himself, we can smell Coffey's protagonists and feel their breath on our cheek. Like Chekhov, he must be a notebook writer; how else to explain the strange quirks and the perfect but unaccountable details that animate these intimate portraits?" -EDMUND WHITE, author of Inside a Pearl and A Boy's Own Story Among these eight stories, a fan of writer (and fellow adoptee) Harold Brodkey gains an audience with him at his life's end; two pals take a Joycean sojourn; a man in the business of naming things meets a woman who may not be what she seems; a father discovers his son is suspected in an assassination attempt on the President. In each tale, Coffey's exquisite attention to character and nuance underlies the brutally honest perspectives of his disenchanted fathers, damaged sons, and orphans left feeling perpetually disconnected. Michael Coffey is the author of three books of poems and 27 Men Out, a book about baseball's perfect games. He also co-edited The Irish in America, a book about Irish immigration to America, which was a companion volume to a PBS documentary series. He divides his time between Manhattan and Bolton Landing, New York. The Business of Naming Things is his first work of fiction."--

"Among these eight stories, a fan of writer (and fellow adoptee) Harold Brodkey gains an audience with him at his life's end; two pals take a Joycean sojourn; a man in the business of naming things meets a woman who may not be what she seems; a father discovers his son is suspected in an assassination attempt on the President. In each tale, Coffey's exquisite attention to character and nuance underlies the brutally honest perspectives of his disenchanted fathers, damaged sons, and orphans left feeling perpetually disconnected"--
Notes: "First published: 2014"--Title page verso.
Table of contents: title: Moon over Quabbin; title: The business of naming things; title: Sunlight; title: I thought you were Dale; title: Inn of the nations; title: The Newman oys; title: Sons; title: Finishing Ulysses.