Description
The riddles of desire, youth, old age, poverty, and wealth are laid bare in this radiant collection from a master of the form.
The riddles of desire, youth, old age, poverty, and wealth are laid bare in this
radiant collection from a master of the form. From inner-city pawnshops to high-
powered law firms, from the desert of California to the coast of France, THE FLOUNDER paints a vivid portrait of how complex and poignant everyday life can be. Told in vibrant, incantatory prose, these moving, lyrical, and surprising stories teeter between desperation and hope, with Fulton showing us what lasts in an impermanent world.
“In The Flounder, John Fulton writes about men caught
in riptides, navigating the rough emotional waters of
love, marriage and family. A boy faces his father’s terminal
illness. A Mormon teenager traveling through
post-Soviet Europe fails to lose his virginity. A young
husband takes a road trip with his unfaithful wife. Fulton
is a writer of great humanity, with an eye for the
revelatory moment. These are masterful short stories
– closely observed, moving, memorable and profound.”
Jennifer Haigh, author of Mercy Street
“The Flounder…feels unified by topic and tone—although
the tones are various and the diction supple—as well as
in, from time to time, the names of characters. Marital
fidelity and infidelity are at issue here, as is the relation
between generations and the search for (one might as
well call it) authenticity. And the real connective tissue
is the talent of its author, whose eye for detail is both
telescopic and microscopic. Whether set in rural North
America or towns and villages in Europe, John Fulton’s
fictions ring true.” —Nicholas Delbanco
author of Why Writing Matters
“Faced with apocalypses that are sometimes private and
sometimes prophesized, the characters in John Fulton’s
The Flounder wrestle with faith in many forms. These
are stories that illuminate human realities of love and
betrayal, life and death using a touch of the miraculous.
The result is an elegant collection with a timeless sensibility,
as well as the ecstatic capacity to make its readers
see their lives anew.” —Allegra Hyde, author of The Last Catastrophe
“The Flounder is a remarkable book, full of remarkable
stories, stories that move quickly through time while
simultaneously being firmly rooted in place, stories
that manage to be intimate while also having sweep,
and grandeur. In this, they remind me of work by Alice
Munro and John Cheever, but really, they’re 100% John
Fulton: smart, deeply felt, and ingeniously constructed
stories of how we go to extraordinary lengths to keep on
living our ordinary lives.” —Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsloe?
Fiction.
Author Bio
John Fulton is the author of three other books of fiction: The Animal Girl, which was long listed for the Story Prize, Retribution (Picador), which won the Southern Review Fiction Prize, and the novel More Than Enough (Vintage), a Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers selection. His short fiction has been awarded the Pushcart Prize, cited for distinction in The Best American Short Stories, and been published in Zoetrope, The Sun, Ploughshares, and The Missouri Review, among other venues. He lives with his family in Boston, where he directs the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Author City: CHARLESTON, WV USA