The Coast of Chicago - by Stuart Dybek (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A child's collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. Combining homely detail and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination, The Coast of Chicago is a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers.

Review Quotes

"Has claim to comparison with Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Joyce's Dubliners. . .Dybek's energetic prose produces dazzling effects." --Chicago Sun-Times

"Moving and real and often brilliantly ambitious." --Los Angeles Times

"A fictional world that is both ordinary and amazing." --The New York Times

"Irresistible...Mr. Dreiser, Mr. Farrell, Mr. Bellow, Mr. Algren, please say hello to Stuart Dybek. He's one of yours." --The Village Voice

"Establishes [Dybek] not merely as a talent but as a magician comparable to Eudora Welty and Joy Williams." --Chicago Tribune

"Tender and unforgiving...No matter where you grew up, after reading these stories you'll have found the coast of Chicago" --San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Stuart Dybek is the award-winning author of Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, I Sailed with Magellan, and Brass Knuckles, a volume of poetry. A professor of English at Western Michigan University, he lives in Kalamazoo.