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In Sharona Muir’s unique eco-fabulist tales, fantastic animals and real science lead people through adventure and crisis to metamorphoses of the heart, and surprising truths about being human in the living system. In “Menu: Extinction”, an artist obsessed with the mass extinction of species creates a “banquet” installation in which a mermaid is served as a dish, while the banquet’s imaginary, satanic chef stalks his wife. In “Animal Truth,” a fiercely independent woman researching the genome of a mysterious fish discovers that her lover-collaborator is her own son, given away at birth, and wrestles with the meanings of truth and motherhood. A time travelling billionaire escaping the complexities of contemporary life, in “The Bath of Venus,” has his heart broken by a beautiful creature in Earth’s remote past. Each of these stories spins into gold the prickling straw of contemporary anxieties about our continued life on the planet. By turns playful, terrifying, haunting, and sensuous, the stories in this collection inspire wonder at the interwoven lives of human and nonhuman beings. They are both madly inventive and scientifically literate, and (to cite Anthony Doerr’s praise for her work) “absolutely original.”
Thirteen stories deal with men and women who are forced to adjust to life's challenges
In the limited scope of this book I wish to present a brief review of the progressive destruction of nature, particularly in the domain of animal life, and at the same time to ill- trate some of the possibilities by BIII: - Ion-.--------------, which man can prevent this de- 3 ---------- f_4 struction. As the mightiest creation of na- 2,51-______ a _ ___ L...-_j ture, man extends his influence into all of nature's provinces and in- 2 1--- - -------1---; habits all zones of the earth., 51----------1'------1 Civilization and technology, ulti mate consequences of his unique 1 cerebral development, have pro moted man to this position of O >, I, ., oo-="'------------I power. An enormous population increase in recent centuries has 1850 1100 1700 1800 1BIIO 1800 .110.2000 made him one of the most numer An ous of all animal forms. A com h parison of the alarming climb of 5 earth's population curve (Fig. la) -,"0 with the graphical representation r-- of exterminated animal species 30 r- (Fig. Ib) establishes a striking conformity. The steeper the human 20 r-- population curve climbs, the higher 10- stretch the bars representing the h -r-- number of exterminated animal 1650 1700 17150 1800 18SO 1900 19SO 2000 species.
Mary Morris, the acclaimed author of Nothing to Declare, the remarkable journal of a woman traveling alone, now brings us an absorbing and evocative novel of healing and forgiveness, love and war. THE WAITING ROOM is the intricate tale of three generations of women whose lives have been shaped by the essential experience of all women, that of waiting—for love to grow stronger, for wars to end, for life to move ahead. In its richly woven texture, its movements through time and space, the novel introduces us to the unforgettable members of the Coleman family: Zoe, who returns home after years away to confront her brother Badger’s break with reality—the result of taking too many drugs in Canada, where he fled to avoid the Vietnam War; June, Zoe’s mother, who first suffered a deep estrangement from her husband when he returned from World War II; and Naomi, the grandmother, who fled the pogroms of Russia. From the Home on the Road Motel to Badger’s residence at the austere Heartland Clinic, from the plains of the Midwest to the swamps of Florida, three women confront men, madness, dreams, and ultimately one another. Filled with humor and the wisdom of generations, THE WAITING ROOM is a novel of hope in the face of loss, of war and its casualties. It is also about freeing oneself from the dark side of waiting, and escaping into the light of love. Written in a magical, almost fablelike manner, and with the inimitable humor that informs the fiction of Mary Morris, THE WAITING ROOM fulfills the promise of Morris’ earlier work, which, from the start, has distinguished the author as a unique American voice.
“A diverse and thoughtful array of 16 stories written around the theme of endangered species—be they human or animal, mythical or alien.” —Publishers Weekly In this poignant yet uplifting anthology about extinction, science fiction stories draw you into compelling, adventurous, and even humorous tales that will make you think about the future of animals, humanity, and the world around us. You’ll find bugs and buffalo, humans and aliens, creatures that have never existed in our universe and genetically-engineered ones that shouldn’t. In “Seventy-Two Letters” by national bestselling author Ted Chiang—praised by Strange Horizons as “one of the finest representations of the SF subgenre of steampunk”—a discovery reveals that humanity has only a fixed number of generations to survive. A project is embarked upon that could save the species—or open it up to a most inhuman manipulation. A Joe Haldeman poem called “Endangered Species” encapsulates his concerns about war and its effect on the human race. And in “Listening to Brahms” by Suzy McKee Charnas, the last humans alive make first contact with an alien race of lizard-like creatures who appropriate Earth culture at their own peril. In Vanishing Acts, these tales and others “make the reader stop and think about endangered species—including humanity—which is, after all, the point” (Rambles.NET). “[A] splendid new original anthology.” —The Washington Post
It was with her stories that Mary Morris first won attention and acclaim: her first collection, Vanishing Animals, received the prestigious Rome Prize, and her second, The Bus of Dreams, was widely hailed. In this new collection, Mary Morris once again shows her great sensitivity to men and women at moments of turbulence, uncertainty and crisis in their lives-and how they can reach for the unexpected and the spiritual at such times. In the title story, a lifeguard sees his teenage mystique among the girls on the beach dissolve in a panicked moment when he cannot save a child. In "The Wall," a woman confronts her husband's first marriage, in the form of a mural on a kitchen wall that he is strangely unable to contemplate painting over. In "The Glass-Bottom Boat," a mother on her first trip abroad learns about trust through a solicitous stranger. In "The Snowmaker's Wife," a housewife left alone while her husband works long hours at a mountaintop ski resort starts to suspect his betrayal-as well as her own perceptions. In addition to these stories, which have appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Vogue, and other magazines, are two brand-new stories: "Vital Signs" tells of the consequences of a doctor bringing back to life a young woman, half-dead on the side of the road; and "Cross Word" is a wonderfully funny play on those puzzles and the people who do them. Combining Mary Morris's consummate craft as a storyteller with her gift for dramatic travel writing, The Lifeguard is a powerful and haunting collection.
This is a collection of women's travel writings, including work by Joan Didion, Edith Wharton, Mildred Cable, Willa Cather, Isak Dinesen, and others. In wry, lyrical, and sometimes wistful voices, they write of disguising themselves as men for safety, of longing for family left behind or falling in love with people met along the way, and of places as diverse as icy Himalayan passes and dusty American pioneer towns, the darkly wooded Siberian landscape and the lavender-covered hills of Provence. Yet even as their voices, experiences, and paths vary, they share with one another--and with us as readers--reflections upon their gender as it is illuminated by unfamiliar surroundings. Edited and with an Introduction by Mary Morris, in collaboration with Larry O'Connor. Contributors and writings include: Mary Wollstonecraft, "Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark"; Flora Tristan, "Peregrinations of a Pariah"; Frances Trollope, from "Domestic Manners of the Americans"; Eliza Farnham, from "Life in Prairie Land'; Isabella Bird, from "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains"; Margaret Fountaine, from "Love Among the Butterflies"; Gertrude Bell, from "The Desert and the Sown"; Edith Wharton, from "In Morocco"; Willa Cather, from "Willa Cather in Europe'; Isak Dinesen, from "Out of Africa"; Kate O'Brien, from "Farewell Spain"; Rebecca West, from "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon"; Ella Maillart, from "The Cruel Way"; Emily Hahn, from "Times and Places"; M.F.K. Fisher, from "Long Ago in France"; Joan Didion, from "The White Album"; Christina Dodwell, from "Travels with Fortune: An African Adventure"; Annie Dillard, from "Teaching a Stone to Talk'; Gwendolyn MacEwen, from "Noman's Land".
Traveling from the highland desert of northern Mexico to the steaming jungles of Honduras to the seashore of the Caribbean, Mary Morris confronts the realities of place, of poverty, of machismo, and of self. "One gutsy woman and one fantastic writer".--"Cosmopolitan".