Lately

From the Publisher

"[Pritchard's] stories are like marzipan: dense with flavor and beautifully wrought . . . Lately demands to be savored."—Karen Karbo Entertainment Weekly

"[Pritchard] displays the grace and clarity of , say, Anne Tyler or even Alice Munro. But the truth is, Pritchard has a marvelous style all her own. She displays compassion and off-kilter humor in equal doses." Los Angeles Times

"[A] lovely collection . . . The full bittersweet spectrum of Pritchard's narrative imagination is perhaps most charmingly displayed in "The Honor of Your Presence," as two sisters throw a divorce party at which, amazingly and against daunting odds, a rollicking good time is had by all."—Amanda Heller Boston Globe

"Lately has all the elements that enchanted readers of Crackpots. Beautiful sentences, artful storytelling, a wickedly original voice, and, of course, unforgettable crackpots. Pritchard has perfect comic pitch, intelligence to burn, and writes the finest metaphors of any fiction writer I know."—Sigrid Nunez, author of A Feather on the Breath of God and The Last of Her Kind

"Sara Pritchard's writing is so astonishing and delightful that these stories, if they fancied, could run away and join the circus. Lately is one of the most incandescent and tornadic collections I have ever read. Pure white magic. I bow at the clicking ruby slippers of Sara Pritchard."—Will Clarke, author of Lord Vishnu's Love Handles and The Worthy

"The stories in Lately have a lovely strangeness. They’re full of  bright homely details and random events, desertions and disappearances, and their conclusions rise to praise the quirky human capacity for reinvention. A book of rare and fresh originality."—Joan Silber, author of Ideas of Heaven

"A dazzlingly original voice."—Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and The Voyage of the Narwhal

"Sara Pritchard is the real deal. With precision and humor, she creates worlds the reader enters with effortless grace, never wanting to leave or interrupt the proceedings. I can think of no other writer who can take you from the hills of West Virginia to the train tracks of Morocco with such style and grace. More, Sara! More!"—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap and Lucia, Lucia

"Lately is such a moving and funny collection that reading it makes my heart ache. I would follow Pritchard and her characters anywhere just to hear what they had to say."—Vendela Vida, author of And Now You Can Go and Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

"Lately, Sara Pritchard’s unforgettable linked stories, reads like a love-letter to the hysterical juxtapositions, absurd misses, and lost opportunities of the world. The book is funny, sad, irreverent, and dead-on; one that shouldn’t be missed."—Kate Walbert, author of Our Kind

"Lately is a page-turner, a collaged Valentine of a book, and Sara Pritchard is a genius. She embraces her characters' eccentricities—in youth, in middle and old age, and at the threshold of death—with wit, compassion, inventive surrealism, and a deeply realistic insight. Pritchard knows the secrets of both life and death and reveals them with a delightfully addictive insouciance. This is a book to fall in love with, and to read over and over."—Sarah Stone, author of The True Sources of the Nile

"Each of the 11 stories in the unsettling collection stands elegantly on its own, but collectively they branch out and intertwine with each other." Columbus Dispatch

"Pritchard's trademark, often irreverent humor bubbles to the surface over and over again . . . Masterfully done, short stories impart whole chapters' worth of insight into a few brilliantly honed sentences. Pritchard proves she is a worthy contender in both the novel form and its concentrated cousin. Highly recommended." Library Journal Starred

"Well-calibrated forays into unwieldy moments of decision . . . . Pritchard's shutter-click views of her characters capture their messy human lives with a sometimes startling clarity." Publishers Weekly

"These subtly linked 11 stories give dignity to characters whose quirky secret natures are often overlooked. . . .While exploring issues of self- and re-invention, of rootedness and disconnection, Pritchard brings her characters deeply and movingly to life." Kirkus Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Set somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region ("Pennsy-hi-o") and featuring characters from a disconnected family, these 11 stories from Pritchard (Cracked) are well-calibrated forays into unwieldy moments of decision. "The Pink Motel" begins with the adult narrator's assertion that while in Florence the year before, she began thinking of becoming a Roman Catholic, then quickly segues into her memory of losing her father, who literally vanished from their Zanesville, Ohio, house: his disappearance prompts her lifelong pursuit to reinvent herself (the Catholicism just being the latest example). In "The Wonders of the World," elderly father Reggie is still physically sickened by the loss of his peace-activist daughter, Faye, killed in a freak explosion years before leaving Reggie only his glib, prosperous, unlovable son, Albert (and Albert's new family) to visit on holidays. "The Honor of Your Presence" builds up to a zany, after-26-years-of-marriage divorce party for the narrator's aphasic sister, Maggie, prompting all kinds of sweet and sour memories; while "Late October, Early April" delineates the poignant ramifications a generation later of a mother's prescribed use of the fetus-harming drug thalidomide. The title story's narrator is a middle-aged, twice-married woman resigned to watching her daughter make the same mistakes she did. Pritchard's shutter-click views of her characters capture their messy human lives with a sometimes startling clarity. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In these 11 loosely linked stories, Pritchard (Crackpots) examines the quirky lives of a handful people whose paths intersect over several decades. Using iconic markers (Thalidomide, American Airlines Flight 77, paint-by-numbers art projects), she moves the reader back and forth through the decades, tracking her characters as they carefully (and sometimes not so carefully) tackle life's stressors-divorce, birth defects, cancer, adultery, and the challenges of aging. At times clueless, often endearingly inept in their fumbling efforts to keep their families together, Pritchard's people sparkle with equal parts courage and bewilderment. Pritchard's trademark, often irreverent humor bubbles to the surface over and over again. In "The Honor of Your Presence," for instance, staffers at an ad agency fantasize about starting Last Suppers, a meals-on-the-go business for overscheduled Christians. The Pied Piper, a compassionate, music-loving exterminator in "Here on Earth," is thrilled to entice an enormous rat out of hiding with Saturday Night Fever's "Stayin' Alive." Masterfully done, short stories impart whole chapters' worth of insight into a few brilliantly honed sentences. Pritchard proves she is a worthy contender in both the novel form and its concentrated cousin. Highly recommended.-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor District Lib., MI Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Set in the fictional towns and suburban subdivisions of what Pritchard (Crackpots, 2003) calls New Northwest Pennsi-hi-o, these subtly linked 11 stories give dignity to characters whose quirky secret natures are often overlooked. The first story, "A Winter's Tale," in which a woman named Celeste walks home on a cold night after a deer hits her car, seems to go nowhere. But the loose-endedness is deceiving, for in the deeply moving "The Christening," situated midway through the volume, Celeste reappears, first through the semi-demented eyes of her aged mother and then in stark reality as she cares for that mother and her tattooed but charming teenaged son while knowing that she has cancer. Similarly, characters grow in dimension as they reappear from story to story. Renata, who suffers a bad week in "Here on Earth," works with Jack and Bobbie, who throw a divorce party for Bobbie's sister in "The Honor of Your Presence." In high school, Renata hung out with Gloria, Beryl and Vincent. Gloria describes the "spiritual topography" within people in the volume's title story. While remembering her unhappy first marriage, she worries that her daughter, who has married Celeste's son, is repeating her unhappy pattern. In "Late October, Early April," Beryl gets pregnant with Vincent's child shortly before he ships out to Vietnam. In "The Pink Motel," Fanny, whose father disappeared when she was six and who never met Vincent, wears his MIA bracelet, claiming him as her lover in an attempt to re-invent her life. Elderly LaRue, whose brother Reggie mourns his daughter in the painfully sad "The Wonders of the World," does not care for Fanny as a tour guide in "La Vecchietta in Sienna," the final story.She is more concerned with the visitations she receives from the dead of Pennsi-hi-o on the streets of Italy. While exploring issues of self- and reinvention, of rootedness and disconnection, Pritchard brings her characters deeply and movingly to life.