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Overview
The bestselling author of Stones from the River and The Vision of Emma Blau renews her reputation as an extraordinary writer of short stories in this major collection that balances her reader on the magical border of laughter and sorrow.
In Hotel of the Saints, Hegi enters the perspectives of lovers and loners, eccentrics and artists, children and parents: a musician tries to protect her daughter from loving a blind man; a seminary student yearns for the certainty of faith that belonged to him as a boy; a woman transcends her embarrassment for her first love, who has tripled in size.
Ursula Hegi's bicultural background enriches these eleven luminous stories that are set in Europe, Mexico, and the United States. Her characters take risks in searching out the unique places where faith thrives for each of them — a rundown hotel, the currents of Cabo San Lucas, the embrace of an ex-convict. And once again, she surrounds them with her elegant language and exquisite images.
Synopsis
The bestselling author of Stones from the River and The Vision of Emma Blau renews her reputation as an extraordinary writer of short stories in this major collection that balances her reader on the magical border of laughter and sorrow.
In Hotel of the Saints, Hegi enters the perspectives of lovers and loners, eccentrics and artists, children and parents: a musician tries to protect her daughter from loving a blind man; a seminary student yearns for the certainty of faith that belonged to him as a boy; a woman transcends her embarrassment for her first love, who has tripled in size.
Ursula Hegi's bicultural background enriches these eleven luminous stories that are set in Europe, Mexico, and the United States. Her characters take risks in searching out the unique places where faith thrives for each of them -- a rundown hotel, the currents of Cabo San Lucas, the embrace of an ex-convict. And once again, she surrounds them with her elegant language and exquisite images.
Los Angeles Times - Susan Salter Reynolds
Ursula Hegi is a tumbledown, headlong sort of writer. Her words rush out, with meager punctuation, like children rolling down a hill, laughing. She unpeels her characters like artichokes. She takes rickety, empty lives and sees them beyond their plainness, until they glow with meaning--historical meaning--and become saints.
Editorials
From the Publisher
Maggie Jones The New York Times Book Review Hegi pulls up the shades on a rich diversity of lives...with a mature, confident voice.Susan Salter Reynolds Los Angeles Times [Hegi] takes rickety, empty lives and sees them beyond their plainness, until they glow with meaning — historical meaning — and become saints.
Susan Salter Reynolds
Ursula Hegi is a tumbledown, headlong sort of writer. Her words rush out, with meager punctuation, like children rolling down a hill, laughing. She unpeels her characters like artichokes. She takes rickety, empty lives and sees them beyond their plainness, until they glow with meaning--historical meaning--and become saints.— Los Angeles Times
From The Critics
For her first major collection of short stories in more than a decade, Hegi has assembled a cast of disaffected characters, including seminarians estranged from faith and children estranged from parents. Hegi displays a tender empathy for these lonely, confounded souls; she writes convincingly about the mysteries of the heart. Some of the stories—including "The End of All Sadness," a fabulous tale of distorted love—run but a few pages and feel like mere sketches. Others, particularly "Lower Crossing," about a woman coming to terms with the death of her dog, run on too long without ever gaining momentum. But there are stories here that deliver a solar-plexus punch and are worth the price of the book. The title story, about a seemingly helpless woman who wakens to life after her husband's death, is one such achievement, as is "A Woman's Perfume," about a motherless adolescent. And few who read "Stolen Chocolates," which begins with the line "My first love has tripled in size," will soon forget it.—Beth Kephart