In The Gloaming - (Stories) by Alice Elliott Dark (Paperback)

About the Book

This collection of stories presents a fictional terrain of secrets, estrangements, and losses that are intrinsic in Dark's characters' lives. The title story is an intense tale of a mother tending to her dying son. In "Maniacs", two sisters love the same man. And in "Close", a young father-to-be visits his childhood home and contemplates escape from his wife.

Book Synopsis

In this "beautifully composed" (Joyce Carol Oates) short story collection--the title piece successfully made into an HBO film--the complex relationships between lovers, spouses, neighbors, and friends are artfully explored. When the austere and moving title story of this collection appeared in The New Yorker in 1993, it inspired two memorable film adaptations, and John Updike selected it for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. In these ten stories, Alice Elliott Dark, the author of Think of England and Fellowship Point, visits the fictional town of Wynnemoor and its residents, present and past, with skill, compassion, and wit.

Review Quotes

Jennie Yabroff San Francisco Chronicle [Dark] can do a certain kind of writing about a certain kind of love, and break her reader's heart without seeming to try.

About the Author

Alice Elliott Dark is the author the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In the Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry: Prize Stories, among others. She is the director of Rutgers-Newark MFA program.