Early Sorrows

A group of linked stories that memorialize Danilo Kis's early years in a Yugoslavian village. The 19 pieces cover his crucial first bereavements and humiliations, striking various tones - from pastorals to exercises in humour.

As the child of children of immigrants, Louise DeSalvo was at first reluctant to write about her truths. Her abusive father, her sister’s suicide, her illness. In this stunning collection of her captivating and frank essays on her life and her Italian-American culture, Louise DeSalvo centers on her beginnings, reframing and revising her acclaimed memoiristic essays, pieces that were the seeds of longer collections, to reveal her true power as a memoirist: the ability to dig ever deeper for personal and political truths that illuminate what it means to be a woman, a second-generation American, a writer, and a scholar. Each essay is driven by a complex inquiry that examines the personal, familial, social, ethnic, and historical dimensions of identity. Collectively, they constitute a story significantly different from DeSalvo’s memoirs when they first published, where the starkness of their meaning became blunted by material surrounding them. DeSalvo has also restored material written and then deleted—experiences she was too reticent to reveal before, in writing about her sister’s suicide, her husband’s adultery, her own sexual assault. The essays also include new material to shift the ballast of an essay as her life has changed significantly through the years. The House of Early Sorrows is a courageous exploration not only of the DeSalvo’s family life and times, but also of our own.

These short stories filled with “narrative grace and rare craftsmanship” chronicle the loss of innocence and the anguish of young love (San Francisco Chronicle). First Love and Other Sorrows is the hauntingly beautiful debut collection of short stories from American master Harold Brodkey. Written when the author was in his twenties, these strong, affecting tales recall the intoxicating joy of young, springtime love, while lamenting the betrayal of dreams and false ideals in the glaring light of reality. Set in the Midwest during the 1950s, First Love and Other Sorrows centers around a Jewish family that has recently lost its patriarch—and with him the world of privilege. Through the eyes of a son, a sister, and a mother—each one struggling to find a foothold in both family and society—these stories explore class prejudice, obsessive love, and the tragic foibles and emotional truths of being human. First Love and Other Sorrows is masterful fiction from an extraordinary literary artist.

sible."--BOOK JACKET.