Sleeping Mask: Fictions
Peter Lasalle
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
"LaSalle's [stories] transcend their particulars to show people with dreams, dilemmas, and disappointments that will move any reader." --Jhumpa Lahiri, Harvard Review "Haunting and evocative. . . . LaSalle's prose is lyrical, at times rhapsodic, and his characters memorable." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The twelve stories of Sleeping Mask, written in propulsive, fluid prose, introduce readers to remarkable characters. They include a child soldier sent to raid a girls' boarding school, a Virginia Woolf scholar surviving cancer, a desperate writer living under fascism in a futuristic Latin America, the spirits of recently deceased college students on a tour of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and a middle-aged man transported back to his childhood, where he is led out to sea by his mother's ghost. LaSalle's tantalizing "fictions" are evocative of many of the great innovators of postmodern literature, from Borges to Nabokov, while charting a path entirely their own. Through all of their stylistic pyrotechnics these stories never forsake rich characterization and plotting to probe the deepest parts of the contemporary human condition, such as the nature of erotic desire, the legacy of art and artistry, the power of grief and fear, and the horror of war and violence. Peter LaSalle is the author of several books of fiction, including the story collections Tell Borges If You See Him, recipient of he Flannery O'Connor Award, and What I Found Out About Her, winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he is a member of the creative writing faculty at the University of Texas, and Narragansett, in his native Rhode Island.Product Details
Price
$16.99
$15.80
Publisher
Bellevue Literary Press
Publish Date
January 10, 2017
Pages
256
Dimensions
5.4 X 8.2 X 0.8 inches | 0.65 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781942658184
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About the Author
Peter LaSalle is the author of several books of fiction, including the story collections Sleeping Mask, Tell Borges If You See Him, recipient of he Flannery O'Connor Award, and What I Found Out About Her, winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he is a member of the creative writing faculty at the University of Texas, and Narragansett, in his native Rhode Island.
Reviews
Praise for Sleeping Mask "Extraordinary stories which, when one begins to savor their prose, plunge one into oceanic depths of language where the mirror of the sea reflects the myth of the self in dreamy distortions that shock one as revelations of truth." --Dawn "LaSalle's narrative voice hypnotizes, and his enticingly evasive way of concluding each story leaves a dreamlike impression. The twelve stories in Sleeping Mask are nuanced tales of enduring subjects: desire, despair, the arts, and war." --Missouri Review "Haunting and evocative. . . . LaSalle's prose is lyrical, at times rhapsodic, and his characters memorable." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Stylistically daring. . . . An entertaining, assured sampling from an endlessly inventive writer." --Shelf Awareness for Readers "Engaging. . . . LaSalle, a literary descendent of Borges and Nabokov, writes with the inventiveness of his predecessors." --Library Journal "[Sleeping Mask] features characters exploring their circumstances, expectations, and regrets and ruminating on artistry, literature, and mere existence. . . . LaSalle's dozen multifaceted tales challenge the reader to look beyond a linear narrative, as characters are propelled toward an unraveling, bewildering void." --Booklist "Deftly written. . . . Very highly recommended." --Midwest Book Review Praise for Peter LaSalle "A major talent." --Providence Journal "Masterful and idiosyncratic stories." --BOMB magazine "Dreamy stories, deliciously descriptive." --Atlanta Journal-Constitution "LaSalle is a master--his writing is so intelligent and thoughtful, so smooth and fluent, its current so strong, and his characters so easy to care about, even to love, that one forgets to look for the stylistic sleights of hand so admired by academics and instead gets caught up in the lives of people who could easily be one's best friend, lover, aunt--or oneself." --Foreword Reviews "A smart and open writer with a restless intellect and infectious passion." --Publishers Weekly "One of our most distinguished short fiction writers." --Jeff VanderMeer, Bookslut "LaSalle's [stories] transcend their particulars to show people with dreams, dilemmas, and disappointments that will move any reader." --Jhumpa Lahiri, Harvard Review "Peter LaSalle has worked his way deep into the storytelling place. Serious, anomalous, his narratives are set into motion by the obsessions and perturbations of living. There is no model, no recipe--each world is uniquely known and irresistibly defined." --Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age and editor of AGNI "I've always believed that as a short story writer Peter LaSalle has been in the same class as Donald Barthelme and Joyce Carol Oates. . . . His style now flows with such masterly ease that he can be said to be in a class of his own, at the forefront of American creators of original prose." --Zulfikar Ghose, author of The Triple Mirror of the Self "LaSalle is one of our finest storytellers." --Jay Neugeboren, author of Max Baer and the Star of David
