The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories

by Catherine Brady

Overview

The stories in this collection explore those moments when the seemingly fixed coordinates of our lives abruptly give way—when mother love fractures, a faithful husband abandons his family, a conscientious middle-class life implodes, or loyalty demands an excruciating sacrifice. The characters share a fundamental predicament, the struggle to name and embrace some faith that can break their fall. In equal measure, they hunger for and resist this elusive possibility and what it demands of them.The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories deals with a range of circumstances and relationships, and with characters who must decide what they are willing to risk for the sake of transformation, or for the right to refuse it. The stories trace the effort to traverse the boundaries between one state and another—between conviction and self-doubt, recklessness and despair, resignation and rebellion. And each story propels the reader to imagine what will happen next, to register the unfinished and always precarious quality of every life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874177756
Publisher:	University of Nevada Press
Publication date:	02/28/2009
Series:	Western Literature and Fiction Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	597 KB

About the Author

Catherine Brady's short stories have appeared in prominent literary journals and have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories. Her first collection, The End of the Class War, was a finalist for the 1999 Western States Book Award for Fiction, and her second, Curled in the Bed of Love, was co-winner of the 2002 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. She is also the author of a biography, Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA (2007). She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco. For more information about the author, visit her Website: www.catherinebradyauthor.com.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments @@@ Looking for a Female Tenet @@@ The Dazzling World @@@ Slender Little Thing @@@ Scissors, Paper, Rock @@@ The Mechanics of Falling @@@ Last of the True Believers @@@ Wait for Instructions @@@ Much Have I Traveled @@@ Seven Remedies @@@ Those Who Walk During the Day @@@ Wicked Stepmother @@@

Editorial Reviews

In the exemplary title story of Brady's third collection of closely observed San Fran-centric stories (following Curled in the Bed of Love), a relationship both playful and tense is revealed subtly by everyday stresses to be a charged power struggle between privileged equestrian college dropout Annie and Clay, the stable manager. Whether carried away by their horses or their hearts, Brady's characters fixate on the unpredictable, "teetering between knowing what was ahead and refusing to know." Buffeted by outside forces (illnesses, busted pipes, financial straits and death), Brady's characters often waver and fall: in "The Dazzling World," a woman who lost her last boyfriend to suicide can't make sense of her current relationship; "Slender Little Thing" follows a teenage mom, who struggles by day with the rich children she nannies and by night with her own daughter; a businessman leaves his family to work in a church-run homeless shelter in "Those Who Walk During the Day." Excepting the self-involved protagonist of "Wicked Stepmother," Brady's leads are likable and idiosyncratic, and her insight into their unstable lives will keep readers swaying between a sense of comfort and loss. (Feb.)

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