Venus in the Afternoon
Tehila Lieberman
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, 2012.
The short stories in this rich debut collection embody in their complexity Alice Munro's description of the short story as "a world seen in a quick, glancing light." In chiseled and elegant prose, Lieberman conjures wildly disparate worlds. A middle aged window washer, mourning his wife and an estranged daughter, begins to grow attached to a young woman he sees through the glass; a writer, against his better judgment, pursues a new relationship with a femme fatale who years ago broke his heart; and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor struggles with the delicate decision of whether to finally ask her aging mother how it was that she survived. It is all here--the exigencies of love, of lust, the raw, unlit terrain of grief. Whether plumbing the darker depths or casting a humorous eye on a doomed relationship, these stories never force a choice between tragedy and redemption, but rather invite us into the private moments and crucibles of lives as hungry and flawed as our own.Product Details
Price
$14.95
$13.90
Publisher
University of North Texas Press
Publish Date
October 17, 2012
Pages
177
Dimensions
5.5 X 0.5 X 8.5 inches | 0.55 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781574414660
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
TEHILA LIEBERMAN has won the Stanley Elkin Memorial Prize and the Rick Dimarinis Short Fiction Prize and her fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including Nimrod, the Colorado Review, Salamander, and Cutthroat. Her nonfiction has been published in Salon.com and in Travelers' Tales Guides anthologies, including Best Women's Travel Writing 2007. Originally from New York, she lived in Jerusalem before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she consults as a writing coach for Harvard Business School.
Reviews
"A bountiful, confident book. Tehila Lieberman trusts her readers to discover that these carefully wrought stories about love, loss, illness, betrayal, all the stuff of life--are also about destiny, and the impossibility of avoiding your fate."--Edith Pearlman, author of Binocular Vision, winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
"Quiet, moving, masterfully crafted. Such are the nine stories in Venus in the Afternoon. Tehila Lieberman writes with precision, restraint, with a compassionate heart. She inhabits her characters, young or old, men or women, honestly, but without judgment, until they rise off the page and stand before us breathing and alive. New York, the Atacama desert, Amsterdam or Cuzco in Peru, the settings in Venus in the Afternoon are just as varied as the lives which they contain. A wonderful collection, one that will stay in your mind long after you have bid it goodbye." --Miroslav Penkov, author of East of the West and judge
"Having taught college students many contemporary short stories, I can attest to the power of this collection: Tehila Lieberman's extraordinary use of language I get lost in, her words that stir my senses ... 'the smell of honeysuckle in the untended gardens that offer up flowers, voluptuous, bursting, grass that reaches, snake-like, upward, weaving quietly between people's quarrels and midday naps.' ('Into the Atacama'). These stories are to be read with pleasure, with awe."--Carol Dine, author of Van Gogh in Poems
"Tehila Lieberman's Venus in the Afternoon is a stunning collection; beautifully written and emotionally compelling in ways that leave the reader spellbound. Again and again, she explores the intricate webs of society and finds the most fragile and vulnerable threads that tether lives together while never losing sight of the individual human heart."--Jill McCorkle, author of Going Away Shoes
"Each story in Tehila Lieberman's collection takes the reader on a journey to new and unexpected territory. This is a consistently surprising and satisfying collection."--Stephen McCauley, author of The Object of My Affection and Insignificant Others
"In luxuriant prose that seduces as it surprises, Tehila Lieberman traverses that perilous territory we call love with a keen eye and a generous heart. These are stories that tell the truth--and they do it beautifully."--Joan Leegant, author of An Hour in Paradise and Wherever You Go
"I'm in love with Lieberman's haunting and capacious fictional world in which her characters all seem to be struggling to become citizens of some country, real or imagined."--Pagan Kennedy, author of Confessions of a Memory Eater
"The author's gift is the ability to use fiction as a portal through which her characters come toward us 'like lovers, mysterious, confessional, lusting, or fragile.'"--Foreword Review
"Quiet, moving, masterfully crafted. Such are the nine stories in Venus in the Afternoon. Tehila Lieberman writes with precision, restraint, with a compassionate heart. She inhabits her characters, young or old, men or women, honestly, but without judgment, until they rise off the page and stand before us breathing and alive. New York, the Atacama desert, Amsterdam or Cuzco in Peru, the settings in Venus in the Afternoon are just as varied as the lives which they contain. A wonderful collection, one that will stay in your mind long after you have bid it goodbye." --Miroslav Penkov, author of East of the West and judge
"Having taught college students many contemporary short stories, I can attest to the power of this collection: Tehila Lieberman's extraordinary use of language I get lost in, her words that stir my senses ... 'the smell of honeysuckle in the untended gardens that offer up flowers, voluptuous, bursting, grass that reaches, snake-like, upward, weaving quietly between people's quarrels and midday naps.' ('Into the Atacama'). These stories are to be read with pleasure, with awe."--Carol Dine, author of Van Gogh in Poems
"Tehila Lieberman's Venus in the Afternoon is a stunning collection; beautifully written and emotionally compelling in ways that leave the reader spellbound. Again and again, she explores the intricate webs of society and finds the most fragile and vulnerable threads that tether lives together while never losing sight of the individual human heart."--Jill McCorkle, author of Going Away Shoes
"Each story in Tehila Lieberman's collection takes the reader on a journey to new and unexpected territory. This is a consistently surprising and satisfying collection."--Stephen McCauley, author of The Object of My Affection and Insignificant Others
"In luxuriant prose that seduces as it surprises, Tehila Lieberman traverses that perilous territory we call love with a keen eye and a generous heart. These are stories that tell the truth--and they do it beautifully."--Joan Leegant, author of An Hour in Paradise and Wherever You Go
"I'm in love with Lieberman's haunting and capacious fictional world in which her characters all seem to be struggling to become citizens of some country, real or imagined."--Pagan Kennedy, author of Confessions of a Memory Eater
"The author's gift is the ability to use fiction as a portal through which her characters come toward us 'like lovers, mysterious, confessional, lusting, or fragile.'"--Foreword Review
