Miss Jane bookcover

Miss Jane

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Description

Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South, in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America.

Now, drawing on the story of his own great-aunt, Watson explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that would stand in the way of the central "uses" for a woman in that time and place: sex and marriage. From the highly erotic world of nature around her to the hard tactile labor of farm life, from the country doctor who befriends her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave her, Miss Jane Chisolm and her world are anything but barren.

The potency and implacable cruelty of nature, as well as its beauty, is a trademark of Watson's fiction. In Miss Jane, the author brings to life a hard, unromantic past that is tinged with the sadness of unattainable loves, yet shot through with a transcendent beauty. Jane Chisolm's irrepressible vitality and generous spirit give her the strength to live her life as she pleases in spite of the limitations that others, and her own body, would place on her. Free to satisfy only herself, she mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.

Product Details

PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
Publish DateJuly 12, 2016
Pages288
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconHardback
EAN/UPC9780393241730
Dimensions8.4 X 5.6 X 1.1 inches | 1.0 pounds

About the Author

Brad Watson (1955-2020) was the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Heaven of Mercury and Miss Jane, and two collections of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. His work has been recognized by the short list and long list of the National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Great Lakes New Writers Award, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Fiction (twice), the Southern Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, a National Endowment of the Arts Grant in Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harper Lee Award, and the Award in Letters granted by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He taught creative writing at Harvard University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Wyoming, Laramie.

Reviews

Miss Jane is a beautifully written, great-hearted and at times heart-breaking novel about decent but wounded people trying to make their way in the world. Watson's creations could easily become mere caricatures in a lesser writer's hands, but he never condescends to them or their plights, especially Miss Jane herself, who dances despite knowing that the dance and all that it represents 'was something with no long life ahead.' Miss Jane takes its readers beyond the usual levels of a novel's power and into the sublime.--Ron Rash, author of The Cove

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