If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This
Fiction
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3.4 • 17 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
FINALIST FOR THE FRANK O’CONNOR SHORT STORY AWARD
NOW WITH AN ADDITIONAL STORY.
Heralding the arrival of a stunning new voice in American fiction, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This takes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all: A father struggles to forge an independent identity as his blind daughter prepares for college. A mother comes to terms with her adult daughter’s infidelity. An artist mourns the end of a romance while painting the portrait of a dying man. Brilliant, hopeful, and fearlessly honest, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This illuminates the truths of human relationships, truths we come to recognize in these characters and in ourselves.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Robin Black's Life Drawing.
Look for the If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This discussion guide inside.
Praise for If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This
“I want to shout about how just when you thought no one could write a story with any tinge of freshness let alone originality about childhood. . . about marriage . . . about old age, Black has done it. . . . Black delivers real emotion, the kind that gives you pause. . . . Will Robin Black win [the Pen/Hemingway Prize] for this book? If I were a judge, she would.”—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
“Pitch-perfect . . . so deft, so understated, and so compelling that you have to slow down to savor each vignette. . . . Fans of Mary Gaitskill, Amy Bloom, and Miranda July will feel like they’ve found gold in a river when they discover Robin Black. . . . [A] writer to watch.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“Each story reads like a mini-novel . . . worlds are contained in a single page. And the writing . . . oh, the writing . . . There’s no narrative cohesion, no point. Rather, If I Loved You is a ‘Fantastic Voyage’ into the bloodstream of the human species. . . . Maybe it’s midlife maturity, maybe it’s raw talent, but If I Loved You leaves you longing for more."—San Francisco Chronicle
“Incisive . . . peopled with characters so fully imagined you’ll feel they’re in the room.”—People
"Exquisitely distilled tales of loss and reckoning . . . [Black] evokes a Sparkian blend of skepticism and grace."—Vogue
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The stories in Black's solid debut collection are fraught with loss, usually of a loved one. Evocative and lyrical, the characters' introspections, while sometimes overwrought, are balanced by the sharp dialogue. In The Guide, a father takes his blind teenage daughter to meet her new seeing-eye dog and is forced to confront her independence. While painting a portrait of a man with Alzheimer's, the aging main character of Immortalizing John Parker grapples with the recent death of her lover. The title story is the tale of neighboring couples battling over a fence, told from the perspective of the wife with terminal cancer. In Pine, a woman must decide whether to move on from the memory of her dead husband to begin a love affair with her male best friend. Each story is carefully crafted, though Black is at her best when she resists the impulse toward tidiness.
