Director of the World and Other Stories

by Jane McCafferty

Overview

The characters in Director of the World and Other Stories are often distanced, lonely, or displaced from others and the events around them, yet they are almost always ready to act, to become involved with others, and to change. In “Eyes of Others,” a woman, stopping with her family at a Howard Johnson’s during a trip, becomes fascinated by the meeting of two strangers and attempts to connect with her own family. Two teenaged girls in “While Mother Was Gone with 571” play a practical joke on a lonely neighbor and watch from the roof of their house as the consequences unfold. These characters, and others in the collection, attempt to make sense of their broken lives and shattered thoughts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780887484926
Publisher:	Carnegie-Mellon University Press
Publication date:	06/04/2008
Series:	Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Series: Fiction
Pages:	178
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

JANE MCCAFFERTY is also author of One Heart, a novel, and Thank You for the Music, a second collection of stories, both from HarperCollins. Her works has been awarded the Mademoiselle Award for fiction, The Great Lakes Award, The Drue Heinz Literature Prize, two Pushcart prizes and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. Six of her stories have been listed in Best American Short Stories. She teaches fiction and non-fiction courses at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Table of Contents

World Upon Her Shoulder • The Shadders Go Away • Help, I'm Being Kidnapped • Eyes of Others • While Mother Was Gone with 571 • Thirst • By the Light of Friendship • Director of the World • Good-bye Now • Replacement • An Evocation

What People are Saying About This

John Edgar Wideman

"There is an eloquence in these stories and it is an eloquence earned. Madness, desertion, lost children, lost husbands and lovers, the fear and threat of abandonment, women holding on to self and reality just barely, landscapes constructed of what people dream and think and wish and avoid, rich substance of inner lives explored in language memorable and quotable, with a life and integrity of its own."