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Title: A gathering by a shrewd, inventive, always empathic Master.
Review: Word for word, there's more going on in one of Grace Paley's small masterpieces than in any hefty bestseller on-shelf today. With a single phrase, she can sum up the fullest life, skewer the truth at the heart of things, or send a story off in a direction that surprises in the most satisfying ways. This is an artist who creates characters who live, who delight, who enrich us for knowing them, however briefly. In my favorite story, "A Conversation with My Father," Paley provides a summation of her aesthetic: "Everyone, real or invented," the story tells us, "deserves the open destiny of life." In this collection, you will find a fearless, insightful, & inventively-entertaining explorer as your guide to such "open destinies." It's all here: romance, satire, experimental art, drama that's almost epic, humane warmth. This is literature at its freshest, not because it's new, but because it is timeless
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