Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
Audiobook9 hours
The Heaven of Animals: Stories
Written by David James Poissant
Narrated by Susan Bennett, Peter Jay Fernandez, Ken Marks and
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
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About this audiobook
In this masterful debut, an award-winning writer and first-rate storyteller explores the tenuous bonds of family-- fathers and sons, husbands and wives-- as they are tested by the sometimes brutal power of love. In each of the stories in this remarkable collection, David James Poissant delivers a moving portrayal of a relationship in turmoil. His strikingly true-to-life characters have reached a precipice, chased there by troubles of their own making. Some stand frightened, some ready to fight. Some seek atonement, others the atonement that is owed them. But, brought to the brink, each must make a choice: Leap, or look away? Lee Martin writes that Poissant forces us " to face the people we are when we' re alone in the dark," and, from the two men racing to save the life of a sick alligator in " Lizard Man" to the girl helping her boyfriend face his greatest fears in " The End of Aaron," from a son grieving his father in " 100% Cotton" as he stalks death on an Atlanta street corner to a brother' s surprise at the surreal, improbable beauty of a late night encounter with a wolf, Poissant' s invented worlds shine with honesty and dark complexity, but also with a profound compassion. These are stories hell-bent on hope. Fresh, smart, lively-- and often wickedly funny-- The Heaven of Animals is breathtakingly original and compulsively readable. As bestselling author Kevin Wilson puts it, " Poissant is a writer who knows us with such clarity that we wonder how he found his way so easily into our hearts and souls."
Author
David James Poissant
David James Poissant is the author of The Heaven of Animals: Stories, in print in five languages, winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a Florida Book Award, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and in numerous anthologies including New Stories from the South, Best New American Voices, and Best American Experimental Writing. A recipient of scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Tin House, Wesleyan, and Longleaf writers’ conferences, he teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida and lives in Orlando with his wife and daughters. Lake Life is his first novel.
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