The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg

By Deborah Eisenberg

Book Overview

When Deborah Eisenberg's first book of stories, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, was published, John Updike noted: "Whenever a new writer arrives, a new window of life is opened, and this has happened here." The scope and depth of Eisenberg's idiosyncratic vision were even more apparent in her second collection, Under the 82nd Airborne, which The New York Times Book Review called "nothing short of extraordinary."

As these two collections gathered here into one volume show, Eisenberg's stories have an astonishing power and range. Her characters, whether they are walking in the streets of Manhattan or seemingly abandoned in foreign countries, continually make disquieting and sometimes life-threatening discoveries about themselves, discoveries that illuminate not only their own lives but also the wider net of relationships in which they are enmeshed.

"The reprinting of these two collections as one is sure to win Eisenberg's stories an even wider audience than they now enjoy." - Publishers Weekly

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374524920
• ISBN13: 9780374524920
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful

Honest, daring, funny, and smart, perfectly calibrated, perfectly observed. No short story writer today is better than Eisenberg at conveying the shifting nuances of self-doubt, self-consciousness, and self-deception.

Our Greatest Short Story Writer

I can think of no contemporary writer as underappreciated and brilliant as Deborah Eisenberg. Eisenberg plumbs emotional depths few writers dare even approach and yet never at the expense of the heart. I highly reccomend all of her work to anyone who appreciates excellent, brave writing.

brilliantly written stories!

The stories in this book, particularly "What it was like seeing chris", "the custodian", "days", "a cautionary tale",and "rafe's coat" are brilliantly written, haunting stories that describe feelings and states of mind that you would have thought to be indescribable. You are really MISSING OUT if you do not read Ms. Eisenberg's stories. I read these over and over again and NEVER tire of them...my book is already falling apart!

Overlooked literary giant

At her very best, Eisenberg compares favorably with giants such as Flannery O'Connor and even Chekov. "What It Was Like, Seeing Chris" is definitely the author at her best--richly provocative, continually surprising, virtuosic in covering registers from the mundane to the philosophic and epiphanic. Should anyone like to share impressions about this story, I'd love to hear from you