The Stray American - Softcover

Brandmark, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907320466 ISBN 13: 9781907320460

Verlag: Holland Park Press, 2016

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Reseña del editor:

We follow Larry Greenberg, a flawed but engaging character, on his journey in search of a soulmate and a sense of purpose. The witty descriptions and dialogue are very appealing, yet there is also an enticing cynical touch, as well as a hint of tragedy. Set in 2003, Larry Greenberg escapes from his corporate law job in Boston to teach in a seedy American college near London's Waterloo Station. His classes are composed of feckless young Americans on their year abroad and students from developing countries aiming to gain entrance into the United States. Larry lives alone in Wimbledon, and his British lovers want him out before the morning. Then he meets Carla who lets him stay the night, but who has to face her own anorexic daemons and who is into bondage. His search for companionship takes him to the Un-Americans, a tiny group of disaffected expatriate Americans who have joined together to demonstrate against their government's invasion of Iraq and to eat potluck Thanksgiving dinner. Though repelled by these eccentrics, he stays for Devorah, a dancer whose radical politics he tries to ignore. Meanwhile one of his American students disappears, while another student, an Egyptian desperate for a visa to the US, plans a marriage of convenience. Larry is reunited with Carla at an exhibition of her drawings. He discovers he is featured and doesn't know what's more revealing: being in the nude or sprouting a wing. Larry, the unassuming hero, continues to have moments of unease even when being cosseted within the warm traditional English lifestyle of Carla's mother. His own mother believes he has come to London to find himself, but has he lost his bearings? He has always been rootless, unwilling to commit himself to a job or woman or cause. If he grows up, must he shed his wings? Larry is not one of those who cannot return home, but is he condemned to forever consider himself to be an outsider?

Biografía del autor:

Wendy Brandmark is a fiction writer, reviewer and lecturer. She writes both novels and short stories. Her first novel, The Angry Gods, (Dewi Lewis, 2003, US edition 2005), explores racism and difference in New York City in the 1950s and 1970s. The Angry Gods received excellent reviews in The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent and The Guardian. Wendy's short stories, set in New York, Boston, Denver and London, have been widely published in British and American magazines and anthologies, including The Massachusetts Review, Riptide Journal, Stand Magazine, Lilith Magazine and The Warwick Review. The Denver tales of outsiders, thieves and east coast refugees originate in the rundown Capitol Hill area of the city in the early 1970s. The New York and Boston stories focus on childhood and coming of age, and the London stories look at the deceptions of memory, the way the past merges into the present. She received an award from the Arts Council England in 2006 to fund the writing of short stories. In 2013 she was a fellow at the Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts where she worked on the first draft of a novel. She has been awarded a writing residency for 2014 at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Wendy reviewed fiction for many years for a range of publications, including The Financial Times, New Statesman and The Listener. Her most recent reviews have appeared in The Literary Review, The Independent and The Times Literary Supplement. She has taught creative writing in London for over fifteen years. She shaped and directed the creative writing programme in Birkbeck College's Faculty of Continuing Education and has taught creative writing at all levels from beginner to advanced. At present Wendy supervises second year students in the Oxford University Master of Studies (MSt) in Creative Writing, and she teaches fiction writing at The City Lit. Wendy is currently working on a short story collection and two novels. Wendy has always lived in cities. She grew up in the Bronx and went to university in Boston. London is now her home. More information is available from her website. The Stray American, a novel about being uprooted and the search for identity while living in a foreign country, will be published in the autumn of 2014.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Holland Park Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1907320466
• ISBN 13: 9781907320460
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 250