The Collected Stories (1994)

by Grace Paley

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▾LibraryThing recommendations

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Grace Paley was a master when it came to dialogue and making simple acts of living into something larger. "The Little Girl" is one of the most disturbing yet perfectly crafted stories I've ever read. (

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ShortStoryLover | Sep 25, 2011 |

No one can excel the power of Paley in her short stories for capturing vivid portraits of very different individuals at all stages in their lives. I am in awe of her. What a remarkable writer. Everyone should read these stories. Everyone should read at least one Paley story in high school. Hemingway, Fitzgerald -- sure. But Paley outshines them in that her stories have something that few of the canonical men do -- hope. (

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DBake | Jan 27, 2010 |

My favorite short story writer. There is more life in one of Paley's stories than in most novels. I love her.
-- Michael

BaileyCoy | Jun 7, 2007 |

An astute view of humanity by a fine writer.

http://www.stensrude.com/wred.html#paley (

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bookcrazed | Jun 2, 2006 |

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Original publication date

1994

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Awards and honors

Pulitzer Prize finalist (Fiction, 1995)

National Book Award finalist (Fiction, 1994)

Ambassador Book Award (1995.3|Fiction, 1995)

Epigraph

Dedication

It seems right to dedicate this collection to my friend Sybil Claiborne, my colleague in the Writing and Mother Trade. I visited her fifth-floor apartment on Barrow Street one day in 1957. There before my very eyes were her two husbands disappointed by the eggs. After that we talked and talked for nearly forty years. Then she died. Three days before that, she said slowly, with the delicacy of an unsatisfied person with only a dozen words left, Grace, the real question is – how are we to live our lives?

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I noticed it first on my mother’s face, the rotten handwriting of time, scribbled up and down her cheeks, across her forehead back and forth--a child could read--it said old, old, old.

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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0374530289, Paperback)

This reissue of Grace Paley's classic collection--a finalist for the National Book Award--demonstrates her rich use of language as well as her extraordinary insight into and compassion for her characters, moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again. Whether writing about the love (and conflict) between parents and children or between husband and wife, or about the struggles of aging single mothers or disheartened political organizers to make sense of the world, she brings the same unerring ear for the rhythm of life as it is actually lived.

(retrieved from Amazon Sat, 23 Apr 2011 04:34:32 -0400)

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