House Parties: Stories
With a deft command of comic distance and abiding compassion for her characters, Lynn Levin in House Parties, her debut collection of short fiction, presents us with a broad range of characters who ardently, foolishly, and often with weird invention, relentlessly spar with their fates.
Three friends hike through Yosemite in search of an awe-inspiring waterfall that may or may not exist...a girl on a high-school science trip finds herself abandoned on an island inhabited by aggressive monkeys...a lonely young rabbinical student creates and animates a female form only to see her beloved creature acquire free will...overwhelmed by surveys, an office worker rebels à la Bartleby...a couple believes that a move to a friendly and sophisticated exurban neighborhood will set the stage for happy marriage.
Many of the characters in House Parties see themselves with a certain bemused humor and strive to stay self-possessed even as they struggle against the strange and undeserved things that happen to them. At other times, the characters-sometimes successfully, sometimes not-keep trying to escape the gravity of a plight they created or a problem they refuse to resolve. In observant and generous prose, Levin writes in tones that range from the wry, witty, and hilarious to the lyrical and deeply serious.
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"The stories in House Parties are full of anguished souls and restless hearts, which Lynn Levin examines with the beauty and precision of a poet. I felt the spirit of Poe hovering around these tales, though the sensibility here is entirely modern and original. Levin's characters search relentlessly-for connection, meaning, even revenge-in ways I couldn't help but recognize as lifted directly from my life. Wonderful."
Steve Almond, author of All the Secrets of the World
"Lynn Levin is my favorite kind of writer-honest, specific, real, funny, but never cynical. House Parties is a collection that sees the world with perfect clarity and cherishes it all the same."
Megan Angelo, author of Followers
"These crisply written, sharply observed stories have the surprising hallmark of having mostly gentle, if not outright happy, endings. The turn from dark possibility to lighter conclusion is a welcome relief in our difficult times. Levin affirms something basically positive about the human condition."
Paula Marantz Cohen, author of Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation
