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Tax-exempt? | Silent Retreats Many of the men in Philip Deaver's stories, having drifted out of their native Illinois to the far corners, find comfort from empty jobs and blank relationships in healing, often hilarious, seductions. In "Why I Shacked Up With Martha" a distracted DC executive pierces the gray blur of his glass box on Dupont Circle with illicit, painfully superficial notes passed to his beautiful, liberated coworker. In "Marguerite Howe," a businessman from Texas at a cocktail party in New Haven accosts his hostess, blindly convinced that she is the woman of his college day-dreams at the University of Virginia. And, in Nebraska, a defeated legal aid attorney escapes the cold wind of failure and a near suicidal woman in the deep warmth of "Fiona's Rooms." Other characters, still within the radius of central Illinois, tread through the familiar scenery of the past, measuring with landmarks of memory the distance, and yet the circularity, time has wrought in their lives. In the title story, Martin Wolf-overcome with tears during the morning commute and craving connection and the cleansing rituals of his Catholic youth-learns from the words of a parish priest, crackling through the lines of a pay phone as cars screech by on Roosevelt Road, that silence has become self-indulgent. And in "Infield," Carl Landen savors the well-ordered tableau of the Pony League diamond where he played shortstop and where his son now plays that position. Recalling the ache in the shoulder after an overhand throw, seeing in his mind the figure of his father intruding at the edge of the field, he relaxes the pain of generations, the soreness that comes from knowing a town too well. A well-known theme of Philip Deaver's stories is "what happened to men after what happened to women." The stories in Silent Retreats trace the tentative journeys of men as they redefine who they are in a changed world while still coping with memory and desire in the old ways. Above all, these stories chronicle a search for absolution-for the elusive freedom lurking among the very syllables of the word. Philip F. Deaver has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Bread Loaf. His short fiction has appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1988 and has been recognized in Best American Short Stories 1995 and The Pushcart Prize XX. Deaver teaches in the English Department at Rollins College and is permanent writer in residence there. He is also on the fiction faculty in the Spalding University brief residency MFA program. April 2008 ISBN 0820330663 paper • $19.95 240 pp. • 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.A volume in the seriesThe Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction "Written in vivid, spare prose, the best of these stories linger, sad and profound, like songs you sing to yourself." —Publisher's Weekly"Like all good fiction, the stories in this first collection are true. . .The language, especially the dialogue, is clean and well-lit; the narration is seemly. This is a fine debut." —Virginia Quarterly Review"A triumph. . . a noteworthy introduction."-Kirkus Reviews "The style of these eleven stories is rich-full of talk, imagery, and wit."-Choice "This collection. . . is quite impressive."-Chicago Tribune "Deaver's Silent Retreats is a collection of deeply felt stories, rooted in the American landscape."-San Francisco Review "Deaver's stories are well worth reading-and rereading."-Studies in Short Fiction "Deaver's portrayal of [the characters'] longings, their impetuous actions and their hard-won understandings is impressive."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Deaver fully appreciates the fragility of subtle connections, and in his world of small details and vibrant dialogue he delves into the tragedy relationships provoke and the resulting retreats from the reality of life."-Richmond Times-Dispatch "The short stories in Silent Retreats render the themes of lost innocence and yearned-for renewal in such eloquent and articulate manner that the reader's heart congests with understanding."-Memphis Commercial Appeal "One of the great pleasures of the O. Henry Awards is finding among these writers someone that you want to spend more time with. One of those writers is Philip Deaver."-Albuquerque Journal "Each of these finely crafted stories should be savored slowly with sufficient time allowed between readings to permit complete absorption and appreciation."-Rocky Mountain News "Deaver refuses to retreat in silence and from there springs the power of his work."-Baltimore Sun "In Deaver's new story collection, he employs a discursive, almost rambling conversational prose style to lead us into the worlds of his fictional characters."-Richmond News Leader"This writing is refreshingly unaffected; both the characterizations and situations are commonplace, but not contrived."-Charleston News & Courier "These stories describe characters that capture our hearts. . . Tracing the odyssey of men's lives, Deaver makes their tender journeys seem real."-The Houston Post "[These stories] bespeak an author who cares about his characters, who allows them to speak the kind of crisp dialogue that defines them, who writes skilled narrative which furthers the story without being flashy, who is confident enough of his themes to let them emerge without authorial highlighting."-Puerto del Sol "Deaver offers yet another snapshot of the chasm that yawns between Christianity and Christendom in Silent Retreats."-Books and Religion |
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