Terrarium

This collection will cement Valerie Truebloods standing as one of the finest American short story writers at work today: gathered together for the first time are stories spanning her acclaimed career presented along with her newest work . Valerie Trueblood''s writing has been praised by The New York Times as an exercise in literary restraint and extreme empathy. Selected here are stories from her previous collectionsfinalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Frank O''Connor International Short Story Awardalongside her newest collection which lends this book its name. . The new stories collected within Terrarium represent an exciting direction for the author: a condensing of narrative and in some cases a departure from it into another state of mind. . It''s hard to describe any of Trueblood''s stories as typical. She does not write about people from a single class or caste or geographical area. She has not written a single story emblematic of her work. She does not write stories fantastical or eccentric. Ordinary life her stories may be saying is fantastical enough. She is more like Babel than Chekhov. In all her writing it''s clear that Trueblood believes that the short story can carry both the lightest and heaviest of loads. Terrarium highlights the achievement of simply living the stories within often unresolved but in a state of continuation expansion. Trueblood''s stories arent merely about their subjects theyre inside them..