The Man in the Buick and Other Stories

by Kathleen George

Price $14.95

ISBN 1-886157-20-0

George doesn't waste a word as she plunges the reader into her characters' lives with startling intensity, then skillfully reveals as much about them as it is necessary to know . . . These masterfully shaped stories mark George as a writer to watch. --Booklist

Like Alice Munro, Kathleen George does not rely on one moment to turn a story around; rather, she allows her characters' pasts to inform their present lives and the lives of these stories. The result is a rich journey through whole experiences that lead the reader not to an ending but to an opening, a glimpse at the future for George's character, and a deeper understanding of how our pasts, presents, and futures are intertwined. --Ann Hood

If you don't read another book of fiction all year, read this one. It's the best book I've read in a long time. I'm telling you, this Kathy George can flat out write. The characters are so fully developed, the settings so richly textured, the insights into human nature so heartbreaking--well, it's a wonderful book. . . . Not a day passes that I don't think about these people and consider the effect they have had on my life. --Lewis Nordan

Kathleen George understands the powerful pull of outlaw love. Her characters are earnest and sensible, but when they fall in love, they throw caution to the wind. They chase ghosts, woo addicts, long for their devout Mexican housemaids, leave their perfect husbands for their neighbor's surly gardeners. "It was an old story," one of the lovers sighs, "but it felt brand new . . ." These stories too feel new. --Molly Giles

Early in The Man in the Buick, this phrase appears: "a sweetness under some sort of discomfort," and the words go to the heart of these fictions. . . . Kathleen George's is a quiet but always provocative voice. "Things progress," says one narrator in this subtle story collection, "and that's the miracle of it." --Robley Wilson, Jr.

I will read The Man in the Buick over and over again. I will teach it to my students. I will buy copies for my friends. I will recommend it to friendly strangers. I will do these things because of the uncommon honesty of these stories, their sharp, shimmering prose, and the characters in them, so palpable and deep-thinking and interesting, so infuriating and wise, so funny and sad that I actually missed them when I closed the book. These kinds of stories are so rare in our world, you've got to keep them close at hand, keep them swimming through your thoughts, and pass them on to those you care about as though you were giving them the secrets to a long and beautiful life. --Reginald McKnight

Kathleen George is an assured and elegant writer and storyteller possessed of an exceptionally commodious embrace. One after another, these wise and moving accounts of essential human striving wrap themselves around whole lifetimes of love and hunger, memory and loss. Delightfully readable as these stories are, to enter them is to give oneself over to a delicate mortal struggle for understanding. George is not aiming to make things easy. Her devotions are to what is complex, what is hard won, what is true. She performs this austere practice with a singular grace, and each one of these stories falls into a reader's hands like a precious gift. --Susan Dodd

Kathleen George is a very fine writer. These wise and moving stories linger in the mind and heart long after they're read. --Hilma Wolitzer

Whether she is writing about photographers, an artist, a writer, in stories set in upstate New York, Pittsburgh, Mexico, or China, Kathleen George deftly plays out themes of discordant love, sometimes resolved, and finds a lucid voice to let her characters come alive on the page. The grace of her writing, the intensity of her insights assert themselves in memory and won't let go. A gripping storyteller, George gives us worlds that ring true with human complexity. --Colette Inez

Kathleen George's stories have appeared in such publications as Alaska Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, North American Review, and Mademoiselle. Also the author of Rhythm in Drama and Playwriting: The First Workshop, she is an associate professor of theatre arts at the University of Pittsburgh. She has a novel forthcoming from Bantam Books.