Gateway to Paradise: Stories
Matthew Vollmer
(Author)
Description
In these gritty, imaginative stories set in the mountains and small towns of the South--often in motels, theme parks, or resorts--men and women find themselves at the mercy of an inspiration gone wrong: a man on a tryst is seduced by a ghost; a woman conducts a test to discover who is her true best friend--her husband or her dog; a beleaguered young writing professor goes one step too far while chaperoning the famous writer he finds darkly alluring. In the title story, an ex-high-school basketball player living an uneventful life in her small hometown as a cashier helps her boyfriend rob a lottery winner, and finds herself on an epic journey of fear, deceit, and betrayal.Product Details
Price
$15.95
$14.83
Publisher
Persea Books
Publish Date
October 01, 2015
Pages
184
Dimensions
5.3 X 0.6 X 8.1 inches | 0.45 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780892554669
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
About the Author
Matthew Vollmer is the author of two short-story collections-Future Missionaries of America and Gateway to Paradise-as well as two previous collections of essays-inscriptions for headstones and Permanent Exhibit. He was the editor of A Book of Uncommon Prayer, which collects invocations from more than sixty acclaimed and emerging authors, and served as co-editor of Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts. His work has appeared in venues such as Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Tin House, Oxford American, The Sun, The Pushcart Prize anthology, and Best American Essays. He teaches at Virginia Tech, where he is Professor of English.
Reviews
Surreal, grittily realistic, comic, and tragic at times, but always entertaining. Matthew Vollmer is a very talented writer, and all of that talent is on display in this exceptional collection.--Ron Rash
A beautifully voiced, precise, hilarious, utterly serious, and extremely impressive book.--David Shields
Vollmer's collection is lyrical and honest...unique and character driven stories.
There's a certain wedge of the American South where mountains give way to idyllic college towns and tall tales give way to the ghosts that inspired them. It's the geographical confluence of truth and fiction, history and folklore, and Matthew Vollmer mines that rich terrain in Gateway to Paradise, a collection of short stories that follows disparate lives entangled in the Appalachians like vines of kudzu, tethered by secrets and stories. . . . Vollmer's best stories have a ring of truth . . . . [his characters are] as distinct and magnetic as the region they inhabit.
A beautifully voiced, precise, hilarious, utterly serious, and extremely impressive book.--David Shields
Vollmer's collection is lyrical and honest...unique and character driven stories.
There's a certain wedge of the American South where mountains give way to idyllic college towns and tall tales give way to the ghosts that inspired them. It's the geographical confluence of truth and fiction, history and folklore, and Matthew Vollmer mines that rich terrain in Gateway to Paradise, a collection of short stories that follows disparate lives entangled in the Appalachians like vines of kudzu, tethered by secrets and stories. . . . Vollmer's best stories have a ring of truth . . . . [his characters are] as distinct and magnetic as the region they inhabit.
