Contents
In the Region of Ice
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Unmailed, Unwritten Letters
Convalescing
Shame
Accomplished Desires
Wild Saturday
How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again
The Wheel of Love
Four Summers
Demons
Bodies
Boy and Girl
The Assailant
The Heavy Sorrow of the Body
Matter and Energy
You
I Was in Love
An Interior Monologue
What Is the Connection Between Men and Women?
Excerpt
From "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Just two things, or maybe three," Arnold Friend said. "But I promise it won't last long and you'll like me the way you get to like people you're close to. You will. It's all over for you here, so come on out. You don't want your people in any trouble, do you?"
She turned and bumped against a chair or something, hurting her leg, but she ran into the back room and picked up the telephone. Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she could do nothing but listen to it--the telephone was clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it. She began to scream into the phone, into the roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was locked inside this house.
After a while she could hear again. She was sitting on the floor with her wet back against the wall.
Arnold Friend was saying from the door, "That's a good girl. Put the phone back."
She kicked the phone away from her.
"No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right."
She picked it up and put it back. The dial tone stopped.
"That's a good girl. Now, you come outside."
|
Epigraph
Wee can dye by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombes and hearse
Our legend bee, it will be fit for verse;
And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty roomes;
As well a well wrought urne becomes
The greatest ashes, as halfe-acre tombes,
And by these hymnes, all shall approve
Us Canoniz'd for Love:
—John Donne, "The Canoniztion"
Reviews
- Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 1970, p825
- Publishers Weekly, August 10, 1970, p47
- Library Journal, September 1, 1970, p2829
- Saturday Review, October 24, 1970, p36, 65
- New York Times Book Review, October 25, 1970, p4, 62
- Washington Post Book World, October 25, 1970, p4-5
- Time, October 26, 1970, p119
- New Leader, November 16, 1970, p14-15
- Life, December 11, 1970, p14
- Nation, December 14, 1970, p636-637
- National Observer, December 28, 1970, p17
- Christian Science Monitor, December 31, 1970, p5
- Best Sellers, January 1, 1971, p429
- Booklist, January 15, 1971, p401
- Listener, October 21, 1971, p550
- Observer, November 7, 1971, p34
- Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1971, pxv
Awards
- New York Times Notable Books of the Year
- Best American Short Stories, 1970: "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction, and Began My Life Over Again"
- Prize Stories: The O Henry Awards, 1970: "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction, and Began My Life Over Again"
- Prize Stories: The O Henry Awards, 1970: "Unmailed, Unwritten Letters"
- Best Little Magazine Fiction, 1970: "Unmailed, Unwritten Letters"
- Prize Stories: The O Henry Awards, 2nd Prize, 1969: "Accomplished Desires"
- Best Little Magazine Fiction, 1970: "Unmailed, Unwritten Letters"
- Prize Stories: The O Henry Awards, 1968: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
- Best American Short Stories, 1967: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
- Prize Stories: The O Henry Awards, 1st Prize, 1967: "In the Region of Ice"
Other Editions
|
Previous
The Wheel of Love