Fools

<b>Joan Silber</b> is the author of nine books of fiction most recently <i>Secrets of Happiness</i>. <i>Improvement</i> was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was listed as one of the year's best books by the <i>Washington Post</i> the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> <i>Newsday</i> the <i>Seattle Times</i> and <i>Kirkus Reviews</i>. She lives in New York. Find out more at joansilber.net. <b>LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD</b><br><br>When is it wise to be a fool for something? From New York to India to Paris from the Catholic Worker movement to Occupy Wall Street the characters in Joan Silber's dazzling connected stories tackle this question head-on.<br><br>Vera the shy anarchist daughter of missionary parents leaves her family for love and activism in New York. A generation later her doubting daughter insists on the truth of being of two minds even in marriage. The adulterous son of a Florida hotel owner steals money from his family and departs for Paris where he finds himself outsmarted in turn. <i>Fools</i> ponders the circle of winners and losers dupers and duped and the price we pay for our beliefs offering readers an unforgettable look at work faith love and the eternal quest for personal integrity. An ingenious examination of belief systems beginning with some fiercely principled young anarchists in 1920s New York and spinning the dial to take in India Paris and Occupy Wall Street. Structurally the intricacy is skillful; emotionally it's astounding...<b>Beautiful intricate and wise</b> <b>Excellent </b>. . . the pleasure of Ms. Silber's overlapping tales is that in all of them characters do something to surprise you. Silber deftly constructs whole fully realized lives in just a few pages and her use of first-person narratives gives these stories an <b>intimate confessional</b> feeling as if you've struck up a conversation with a particularly talkative stranger. Astonishing for its range for its sweeping sense of time and place and most especially for its <b>deep insight</b> into the way small choices can circle out to shape lives and even human history. This is <b>a beautiful book and an important literary achievement.</b> Joan Silber's stories <b>charm </b>us. And <b>amuse </b>us. And <b>engage </b>us. And <b>move </b>us. And even <b>enlighten </b>us. <i>Fools</i> embraces us all. Joan Silber's stories are like <b>compressed novels. </b>They are interlocking tales that fill in the history of revolutionary politics in the twentieth century. <i>Fools</i> consists of <b>cunningly surprisingly interlinked</b> short stories which in this case wind their way through the last American century - in particular the last one hundred years of belief commitment monogamy integrity all the things that complicate our lives and take us out of ourselves...You don't know what you're going to be faithful to in the world do you? asks the narrator of Two Opinions plaintively and Silber's characters illustrate this unpredictability with a whole range of dilemmas all of them carefully and intricately imagined. Silber I can tell is never going to let me down and I will keep a copy of one of her books one I haven't yet read on a special emergency get-out-of-book-jail-free shelf. Structurally the intricacy is skillful; emotionally it's astounding...<b>Beautiful intricate and wise</b> <b>Excellent </b>. . . the pleasure of Ms. Silber's overlapping tales is that in all of them characters do something to surprise you. Silber deftly constructs whole fully realized lives in just a few pages and her use of first-person narratives gives these stories an <b>intimate confessional</b> feeling as if you've struck up a conversation with a particularly talkative stranger. Astonishing for its range for its sweeping sense of time and place and most especially for its <b>deep insight</b> into the way small choices can circle out to shape lives and even human history. This is <b>a beautiful book and an important literary achievement.</b> Joan Silber's stories <b>charm </b>us. And <b>amuse </b>us. And <b>engage </b>us. And <b>move </b>us. And even <b>enlighten </b>us. <i>Fools</i> embraces us all. Joan Silber's stories are like <b>compressed novels. </b>They are interlocking tales that fill in the history of revolutionary politics in the twentieth century. <i>Fools</i> consists of <b>cunningly surprisingly interlinked</b> short stories which in this case wind their way through the last American century - in particular the last one hundred years of belief commitment monogamy integrity all the things that complicate our lives and take us out of ourselves...You don't know what you're going to be faithful to in the world do you? asks the narrator of Two Opinions plaintively and Silber's characters illustrate this unpredictability with a whole range of dilemmas all of them carefully and intricately imagined. Silber I can tell is never going to let me down and I will keep a copy of one of her books one I haven't yet read on a special emergency get-out-of-book-jail-free shelf.