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Ebook174 pages2 hours
Hard to Be Good: Stories
By Bill Barich
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
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About this ebook
In his first collection of short fiction, Bill Barich gives us cause to celebrate a prose stylist who can gracefully cross the boundaries of genre. As stated by Anne Tyler, Hard to Be Good is so large and complete that you tend to look up at the end and find yourself surprised that it’s still the same day.
Set in the American West, as are three other of the seven stories in this book, it is about the unselfconscious struggle for wholeness in a divided family. Its adolescent protagonist moves from innocence to experience in the course of a summer vacation with his mother and her third husband, and the result is satisfying, rather than harrowing.
The attempt to make signification relationships cohere, to weather the transformation of innocence, informs all the stories in this book, and in Barich’s worlds the outcome is often goodknowledge does not always lead to hopelessness. Highly disparate mothers covering on a couple in Idaho Falls (Where the Mountains Are”) have much to teach and learn, a nineteen-year-old American studying in Florence accepts the surprising human complications of an outsider’s great pensione adventure (Caravaggio”) . . . and that’s just a few of Barich’s brilliant stories.
Hard to Be Good is a book of real feeling, breadth, and narrative movement. As Frederick Exley wrote, Barich is a splendidly gifted writer.”
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fictionnovels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Set in the American West, as are three other of the seven stories in this book, it is about the unselfconscious struggle for wholeness in a divided family. Its adolescent protagonist moves from innocence to experience in the course of a summer vacation with his mother and her third husband, and the result is satisfying, rather than harrowing.
The attempt to make signification relationships cohere, to weather the transformation of innocence, informs all the stories in this book, and in Barich’s worlds the outcome is often goodknowledge does not always lead to hopelessness. Highly disparate mothers covering on a couple in Idaho Falls (Where the Mountains Are”) have much to teach and learn, a nineteen-year-old American studying in Florence accepts the surprising human complications of an outsider’s great pensione adventure (Caravaggio”) . . . and that’s just a few of Barich’s brilliant stories.
Hard to Be Good is a book of real feeling, breadth, and narrative movement. As Frederick Exley wrote, Barich is a splendidly gifted writer.”
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fictionnovels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
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Author
Bill Barich
Bill Barich is the author of numerous books, among them Big Dreams: Into the Heart of California and The Sporting Life. He has written extensively for The New Yorker, as well as Playboy and Sports Illustrated. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow in fiction. Barich lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Read more from Bill Barich
Laughing in the Hills: A Season at the Racetrack Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Pint of Plain: Tradition, Change, and the Fate of the Irish Pub Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sporting Life: Horses, Boxers, Rivers, and a Russian Ballclub Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Big Dreams: Into the Heart of California Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crazy for Rivers: Tales of Trout Fishing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Traveling Light: A Year of Wandering, from California to England and Tuscany and Back Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Angle on the World: Dispatches and Diversions from the New Yorker and Beyond Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHard to Be Good: Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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