Read Online Book The Pier Falls: And Other Stories by Mark Haddon

From Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, A Spot of Bother, and The Red House, nine dazzling stories diverse in style but united in emotional power

The tales in Mark Haddon’s lyrical and uncompromising new collection take many forms—Victorian adventure story, science fiction, morality tale, contemporary realism—but they all showcase his virtuoso gifts as a stylist and the deep well of empathy that made his three bestselling novels so compelling.
     The characters here are often isolated physically or estranged from their families, yet they yearn for connection. In aggregate the stories become a meditation on the essential aloneness of the human condition but also on the connections, however tenuous and imperfect, that link people to one another. In the title story, an unnamed narrator describes with cool precision a catastrophe that strikes a seaside town, both tearing lives apart and bringing them together. 
     In the prizewinning story “The Gun,” a boy’s life is marked by the afternoon he encounters a semiautomatic pistol belonging to his friend’s older brother; in “The Island,” a Greek princess is abandoned on an island by her abductor; in “The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear,” a group of adventurers travel deep into the Amazonian jungle but discover the gravest danger lurking among their own number; and in “The Woodpecker and the Wolf,” a woman wonders whether she has chosen to travel to Mars only to escape the entanglement of human relationships back here on Earth.
     Drawing inventively from history, myth, folktales, and modern life, The Pier Falls showcases Haddon’s immense gifts of invention and penetrating insight. Read Online Book The Pier Falls: And Other Stories by Mark Haddon Full Free

Review :

“[D]evastating. . .eerily precise and dangerously suffusing. . . . It's one thing to know and write brilliantly about how the world works. It's an entirely different thing to write with deep assurance about what happens when conventions are broken, relationships are scrubbed of ordinary decencies, and the mind shatters. Reality, in Haddon's stories, is endlessly decaying. . . . Mark Haddon. . .is a virtuoso stylist and a fabricator of many forms. . . . One doesn't read Haddon to wonder how he'll write himself out of devastating circumstances. One reads in a state of surrender." 
 —Chicago Tribune 

“The nine stories in Mark Haddon’s debut collection are exuberant, lusty exercises in juxtaposition: intimacy and estrangement, exoticism and domesticity, innocuousness and malevolence, the cataloguing of minute detail and the expansiveness of the zoomed-out lens. . . . [T]he collection’s centerpiece, ‘Wodwo’. . .is one of the best new stories I’ve read for years.”
—The Guardian 

"[M]esmerizing. . . . [P]rovocative. . . . The Pier Falls succeeds in many of the same ways as The Curious Incident, showcasing powerfully sparse language, a keen interest in placing human nature under a microscope and the imaginative construction that’s become Haddon’s trademark. But this collection is an even greater achievement, unveiling a versatility to match the lasting emotional impact of Haddon’s writing. Impressive in its scope and revelatory in its survey of man’s faults and strengths, The Pier Falls is a certain contender for the best short story collection of 2016."
—Paste Magazine

 “The Pier Falls” is a wide-ranging and wonderfully diverse collection. . . . [A] virtuoso performance from Haddon, whose constantly-shifting stylistic choices make every story a capable piece of standalone art. Any one of them, viewed on its own, would be an exquisite reading experience. . . . Each one is a gracefully-constructed reminder that Mark Haddon is a rare and incredible talent. From top to bottom, first word to last, “The Pier Falls” is exceptional." 
—The Main Edge 

“Delightfully dark.” 
—Lit Hub’s 16 Books You Should Read This May 

‘Exquisite… His prose is limpid, blackly funny and shiny with particularity… He writes with the craft of Julian Barnes or, even, Truman Capote.’
—Andrew Billen, The Times (London)


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