Exploring the complexities of human relationships and ethical dilemmas, this collection of stories delves into the moral landscape of contemporary life. Through nuanced characters and intricate narratives, the author examines themes of love, loss, and the choices that define us. Each story presents a unique perspective on the struggles and triumphs of individuals navigating their personal and societal challenges, offering readers a profound reflection on modern morality.
Set against the backdrop of 1960s New York, the book delves into the evolution of Cuban dance music, spotlighting key figures like José Fajardo and Johnny Pacheco. It explores the Cuban flute style's transformation post-1959 revolution and the vibrant charangas that thrived during the chachachá and pachanga craze, often overlooked in existing literature. By addressing issues of race, class, and identity, alongside musical transcriptions and interviews, it uncovers a rich history and the unique sabor that emerged from the interplay between Cuban and New York musical cultures.
Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. A golden couple, their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances.Graham is a bookseller, a big, gregarious man with large appetites - curious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annie's comfortable house in Cambridge. Annie, more reserved and introspective, is a photographer. She is about to have her first gallery show after a six-year lull and is worried that the best years of her career may be behind her. They have two adult children; Lucas, Graham's son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Graham's daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Graham's last and greatest love.When Graham suddenly dies - this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together - Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him? Then, while she is still mourning him intensely, she discovers that Graham had been unfaithful to her; and she spirals into darkness, wondering if she ever truly knew the man who loved her
Have you ever imagined a different life? That's what the play was about, she was thinking abruptly. The wish to imagine what life could be, how it could change, if you were unencumbered. Did everyone who was married do this from time to time, imagine an unencumbered life?
For Eva, the divorced and happily remarried mother of three children, and her adolescent middle child, Daisy, the death of Eva's second husband John in a car accident turns their lives upside down.
At the age of 72, Lily Roberts becomes a national celebrity when she writes her spiritual memoirs. Her children, Alan and Clary, are disturbed by Lily's intimate revelations about her married life. Ten years on, Lily comes to live with Alan, and the bitterness threatens to upset their lives.
Catherine Hubbard is at a crossroad in her San Francisco life. She is twice divorced - although she knows public opinion only seems to allow for one marital mistake - and her three children are grown and scattered. Then news comes that she has inherited her grandmother Georgia's home in Vermont. Putting her teaching job on hold, Catherine travels east to the house where she has frequently taken refuge, as a child from her mother's bouts of dementia and eventual suicide and later from the wreckage of her first marriage. Catherine finds in Vermont not only the ghosts of her own past but those of Georgia's as well. Diaries from the attic emerged of a young woman who had lost her own mother in her teens, who had been condemned to a sanitorium for tuberculosis, and there harboured a secret passion for a fellow patient. As Catherine increasingly comprehends the woman she has only ever known as a grandmother, she begins to feel as if she is living in two worlds, her own and Georgia's as a 'buried stream' below. With unforgettable characters so vivid you can almost see and touch them, THE WORLD BELOW is story telling at its most magical.
A compilation of twenty American short stories originally published in magazines and periodicals issued between January 2001 and January 2002, selected for inclusion by guest editor Sue Miller.
