Dancing On the Outskirts
$44.21
- Paperback
320 pages
- Release Date
30 October 2018
Summary
Here is a wonderful collection of short stories by the writer known for ‘the Mackay vision, suburban - as kitsch, as unexceptional, and yet as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house, its threshold radiant with tiling and stained-glass birds of paradise encased in leaded lights’ - Guardian.
Shena Mackay, who first came to fame before the age of twenty with two novellas, is the doyenne of the short form. In this volume of previously uncollected stories - inc…Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780349007052 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0349007055 |
| Author: | Shena Mackay |
| Publisher: | Little, Brown Book Group |
| Imprint: | Virago Press Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 320 |
| Release Date: | 30 October 2018 |
| Weight: | 251g |
| Dimensions: | 196mm x 128mm x 32mm |
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Critics Review
Mackay’s new collection of short stories showcases her genius for building comedy from terseness and compression … her precise, unsentimental images, integral to her stories’ themes, sum up entire lives … A triumph! - Independent
A collection of exquisitely observed stories … Mackay will introduce us to the apparently trifling thoughts of a host of solitary characters and show us, with wonderful imaginative power, interior lives that are expansive, wondrous and tender. And even when her subjects are sad, the great power of her noticing, and her frequently piercing prose, transforms them into something vibrant and tender: her worlds are illuminated by glistening colours, busy wildlife, tactile skies, sibilant seas and responsive flowers. Mackay sees life in excruciatingly vigorous detail. Hers are lands in which it can feel as if everything is in bloom - TelegraphShena Mackay’s radiant short stories are skewering, funny and utterly original. Dancing on the Outskirts, a selection drawn from more than five decades of writing, was a high point of the year - ObserverA collection of exquisitely observed stories … Mackay will introduce us to the apparently trifling thoughts of a host of solitary characters and show us, with wonderful imaginative power, interior lives that are expansive, wondrous and tender. And even when her subjects are sad, the great power of her noticing, and her frequently piercing prose, transforms them into something vibrant and tender: her worlds are illuminated by glistening colours, busy wildlife, tactile skies, sibilant seas and responsive flowers. Mackay sees life in excruciatingly vigorous detail. Hers are lands in which it can feel as if everything is in bloom - TelegraphShena Mackay’s radiant short stories are skewering, funny and utterly original. Dancing on the Outskirts, a selection drawn from more than five decades of writing, was a high point of the year - ObserverShena Mackay is - as this collection of short stories confirms - a national treasure. Funny and sympathetic, she writes of forgotten poets and faded celebs, her magpie eye seizing delightedly on the tinsel and tat of lives that have passed their peak. Comic gems abound … the delight that they offer is, like Mackay’s writing, continually fresh - The LadyShena Mackay is - as this collection of short stories confirms - a national treasure. Funny and sympathetic, she writes of forgotten poets and faded celebs, her magpie eye seizing delightedly on the tinsel and tat of lives that have passed their peak. Comic gems abound … the delight that they offer is, like Mackay’s writing, continually fresh - The LadyAbout The Author
Shena Mackay
Shena Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1944. Her writing career began when she won a prize for a poem written when she was fourteen. Two novellas, Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumberger and Toddler on the Run were published before she was twenty. Redhill Rococo won the 1987 Fawcett Prize, Dunedin won a 1994 Scottish Arts Council Book Award, The Orchard on Fire was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize and, in 2003, Heligoland was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and Whitbread Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Southampton.
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