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Fast Lanes
Jayne Anne Phillips has always been a master of portraiture, both in her widely acclaimed novels and in her short fiction.The stories in Fast Lanes demonstrated the breadth of her talent in a tour de force of voices, offering elegantly rendered views into the lives of characters torn between the liberation of detachment and the desire to connect.
Three stories are collected...more
Three stories are collected...more
Paperback, 208 pages
Published
May 9th 2000
by Vintage
(first published 1984)
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I find the most fascinating figure of this collection to be a small blue bird egg, delicately painted in gold Chinese characters. It is set in the center of a mandala - radiating steak tags and framed by white pebbles - that is arranged over raw meat at a Bonanza steakhouse. The characters etched on the egg translate as "banquet."
Fast Lanes takes the themes of fragmentation, desparation, and yearning that manifests in shapes of sex or violence or truncated transcendence and gives them a kind of...more
Fast Lanes takes the themes of fragmentation, desparation, and yearning that manifests in shapes of sex or violence or truncated transcendence and gives them a kind of...more
This is a collection of short stories. Most of them are rather relentless in their dark cast of despairing humans. While the writing is spot on in capturing this, I would have liked to see just a little glimmer of hope or humor, even sardonically, just to relieve the darkness a bit. The last story, "Bess" is my favorite of these as it gives a fuller portrayal of the two main characters, a brother and sister, Bess and Warwick.
Nov 28, 2010
Jasmina
is currently reading it
Jayne Anne Phillips has an incredible way with words and describing the concept of 'dislocation' with an understanding.The short stories work with one another to create the full picture of an American wanderer.If you are looking for a book about 'belonging to an American society', then this is the one you should turn to.
Mar 07, 2011
Hakeem
added it
I think This Book Is Interesting Because I Learned Alot from This book & I would Like To Recommend This Book To My Friends.
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Hypnotically good prose in these seven stories. The Vietnam-era coming-of-age story "Blue Moon" was expanded into her novel Machine Dreams, but this version (the longest story in the collection) is more engaging in its focus, I think.
This could be a five-star book but Black Tickets and Lark and Termite are sooooo fabulous that the bar is set high when I read Phillips. Love this writer.
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Jayne Anne Phillips is an American novelist and short story writer. Phillips graduated from West Virginia University, earning a B.A. in 1974, and later graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Phillips has held teaching positions at several colleges and universities, including Harvard University, Williams College, and Boston University. She is currently Professor of Engl...more
More about Jayne Anne Phillips...
Phillips has held teaching positions at several colleges and universities, including Harvard University, Williams College, and Boston University. She is currently Professor of Engl...more
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