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The Things We Do That Make No Sense: Stories
Paperback
Series: Switchgrass Books
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher Price: $16.95
ISBN13: 9780875807638
Publisher: Northern Illinois Univ
Published: Mar 15 2017
Pages: 178
Weight: 0.65
Height: 0.70 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
We are guilty of actions that make no sense. We perform acts of beauty and acts of ugliness. We give in to hidden ambitions, latent hungers, and clumsy grasps at insight.
At the heart of these stories are the rituals--grand and small--in which we humans partake; the peculiar gestures we hope will forge meaning or help us glean some sort of understanding. They may be formally ceremonial and spiritual, like the imposition of ashes in a darkened church. But often they are secular, private, and bizarre. A woman slips her son's old baby tooth into her mouth as he's led away to prison. A girl in a tunnel plays an invisible piano while bombs ravage the city above. A man with a laser machine creates a private galaxy to rekindle lost love. A daughter frantically searches a wax museum for her mother's second self.
Set mostly in Michigan, the stories in The Things We Do That Make No Sense are woven through with the power of ritual and glimmer with lush descriptions and poignant dialogue. From both the everyday and the sacred, these characters piece together the strange mosaic of life.
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