promo_link

$14.95

In stock

ISBN: 978-0-9815899-0-9
Reviews & Media Review in LAMBDA LITERARY
Categories Fiction, Short Stories

Said and Done

Publication Date: June 2009

Description

 

A father dealing equivocally with his son’s ambiguous sexuality conducts a drunken tour of a famous artist’s birthplace. Two lonely women turn the tables on an antic stalker. A shy college kid comes face to face with the devil after he trysts with his roommate’s errant girlfriend. An aging collector reaches a new understanding of his younger lover’s emotional distance when he goes abroad to procure a rare clock. Pursued by a mysterious stranger, a young man tries to come to terms with his abusive past.

In these nine stories, James Morrison writes about the intricate relation between tenderness and cruelty, about the burdens and freedoms of selfhood, the vagaries of identity, and the connections and disconnections among people across a wide range of human experience. Whether recounting the tale of a well-to-do housewife under siege or the ups and downs of a grungy garage band, Morrison portrays the sorrows of loneliness-or the uncommon triumphs of genuine contact-in a prose at once wry and tender, disconsolate and compassionate.

Praise

“You read James Morrison knowing you are in the hands of an extraordinary writer, with a sure sense of musicality, pacing, and description. But the real achievement of Said and Done is not so visible. These characters will possess your imagination long after you’ve put the book down. How does he do that?”

-Paul Lisicky

“Both literary and chatty, full of style and voice, at once leisurely and tense-there are always at least two things going on in the tales of Said and Done. The characters are reticent and they are expansive, caught between the devil of the self and the deep blue sea that is the rest of the world -and the story, between these hard hinged halves, is the precious thing we’re reading toward. Lucky you, to be diving for such pearls.”

-Brian Bouldrey

“An artful, often suspenseful collection of stories by a gifted writer who looks out clearly, and darkly, upon the world.”

-David Ebershoff

About the Author

James Morrison

JAMES MORRISON is the author of a memoir, Broken Fever, and a novel, The Lost Girl, as well as several books on film. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Raritan, and many other magazines, and his work has been cited in both the Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays anthologies. He currently lives in Southern California, where he teaches film, literature, and creative writing at Claremont McKenna- College. His short story collection, Said & Done, is a finalist for a 2010 LAMBDA Literary Award as well as the 2009 ForeWard Book of the Year Award in Fiction/Short Stories.

Visit Author Page