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Glass Grapes: and Other Stories
Glass Grapes and Other Stories is the first full-length collection of short stories by distinguished poet and fiction writer Martha Ronk. Ronk’s work has garnered critical accolades and numerous awards, including, most recently, a 2005 PEN USA Award in poetry, a 2007 NEA Fellowship, and a 2007 National Poetry Series Award. Glass Grapes is a collection of short, experimental stories, usually dominated by an object imbued with fetishistic qualities by an obsessive, self-involved narrator. The language of these stories is repetitive, provocative, imagistic, occasionally comic, and unnerving. Ronk’s fiction moves with the same grace, beauty, and attention to language as her most accomplished poetry.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
216 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 27, 2011
Effective, with a wonderful voice. Perhaps too effective. I felt that the five or six stories I read all had a similar, vaguely sick voice which took me too far into a world that I don't want to be part of at this time... Well-constructed, very worthwhile, and just not for me right now. Everything made me feel grayish-brown, stale smoky and hung over, as though the air of life was clouded up with the stench of bad wine and meaningless affairs.
October 26, 2020
A collection that rewards careful reading. The author here took an unusual approach to character study, using objects, shapes and colours in the physical world to highlight inner torment and obsession. It’s a tact that has no connection to plotting; indeed few of these stories (vignettes?) follow a traditional story arc. But that just makes her razor sharp prose and keen insights more compelling. I'd like to see Ronk try her deft hand at subjects outside the middle-class/academic milieu she's comfortable with, but that's neither here nor there. This remains a profound little book.
July 1, 2026
If you like Ann Patchett, you’ll probably enjoy this. I don’t like Ann Patchett. I savored some of these stories and lacked the patience for others. The (first half of the) book as a whole took me months to get through because I had to be in the mood to read it.
Some notes (Not on all the stories, but only the ones that resonated or made me think without forcing it too much):
“The Score” addresses the fundamental disconnect of priorities in observation. Seemed like a facts vs feelings obsession — factual occurrences vs emotional memory — that leaves the narrator dissatisfied. Her partner remembers many details but it’s ultimately missing the forest for the trees, exemplified by the last line where neither remembers “anything but the score which changes from time to time in the small square at the bottom of the screen.” Narrator seems resigned, finally, about this man “without memory [who] remembered everything”.
“Glass Grapes” I think the narrator was so drawn to fragile objects because handling gave her a sense of control. It sounds ironic because her partner was so solid, so seemingly stable, but that just doesn’t sit well with her. There was a line at the end about how when she was a child and her mother called her inside for lunch, she would instead eat the sand from the sandbox. Like she’s preparing for something to no longer be good? Training herself to accept gritty even when all is fine? It reminded me of when I was a child I had a stuffed bear that had clothes and I cuddled with the pants, then planned to cuddle the shirt once the pants degraded to shreds, and the bear last of all. An extreme and illogical version of “best for last.” That didn’t quite seem like the narrator’s mentality, but it helped me understand a bit, maybe. The ending sentence, in which the narrator sits in the kitchen (not the sandbox) and hears on the radio the line from the Bible about God seeing his creations and behold it was very good, provided a sweet sense of optimism that contrasted the end of “The Score.”
I liked the ending of “The Gift,” which reminded me of why I was so excited in a semi self destructive way throughout high school. It was a type of existence as performance, but action-based with little grounds in the personal. From the story, “If the narrator becomes the interpreter of events between the man and the woman, what does that mean except that they have maneuvered her, without lifting a finger, only counting on her pallor and paranoia, into a position that they had not even dared to hope for and have, therefore, a witness which neither one of them is willing to be and which makes their affair not more but less real, for the very unreliability of the witness, and also, somehow, protected.”
Many of these I felt I didn’t *get*. I wish there was more discourse around the stories because I would love to hear different readers’ interpretations. I didn’t have the patience to mull over “The Tattoo”, for example, but surely there was some profundity that went over my head.
Some notes (Not on all the stories, but only the ones that resonated or made me think without forcing it too much):
“The Score” addresses the fundamental disconnect of priorities in observation. Seemed like a facts vs feelings obsession — factual occurrences vs emotional memory — that leaves the narrator dissatisfied. Her partner remembers many details but it’s ultimately missing the forest for the trees, exemplified by the last line where neither remembers “anything but the score which changes from time to time in the small square at the bottom of the screen.” Narrator seems resigned, finally, about this man “without memory [who] remembered everything”.
“Glass Grapes” I think the narrator was so drawn to fragile objects because handling gave her a sense of control. It sounds ironic because her partner was so solid, so seemingly stable, but that just doesn’t sit well with her. There was a line at the end about how when she was a child and her mother called her inside for lunch, she would instead eat the sand from the sandbox. Like she’s preparing for something to no longer be good? Training herself to accept gritty even when all is fine? It reminded me of when I was a child I had a stuffed bear that had clothes and I cuddled with the pants, then planned to cuddle the shirt once the pants degraded to shreds, and the bear last of all. An extreme and illogical version of “best for last.” That didn’t quite seem like the narrator’s mentality, but it helped me understand a bit, maybe. The ending sentence, in which the narrator sits in the kitchen (not the sandbox) and hears on the radio the line from the Bible about God seeing his creations and behold it was very good, provided a sweet sense of optimism that contrasted the end of “The Score.”
I liked the ending of “The Gift,” which reminded me of why I was so excited in a semi self destructive way throughout high school. It was a type of existence as performance, but action-based with little grounds in the personal. From the story, “If the narrator becomes the interpreter of events between the man and the woman, what does that mean except that they have maneuvered her, without lifting a finger, only counting on her pallor and paranoia, into a position that they had not even dared to hope for and have, therefore, a witness which neither one of them is willing to be and which makes their affair not more but less real, for the very unreliability of the witness, and also, somehow, protected.”
Many of these I felt I didn’t *get*. I wish there was more discourse around the stories because I would love to hear different readers’ interpretations. I didn’t have the patience to mull over “The Tattoo”, for example, but surely there was some profundity that went over my head.
November 19, 2008
At the ForeWord Book Club this week, Peter Conners, editor at BOA Editions, introduces Martha Ronk's debut short story collection. The title story is available for download all week.
In one of my early editorial correspondences with Martha Ronk, she said of Glass Grapes and Other Stories (978-1-934414-13-4): "The main thrust behind the book was to create pieces in which objects rather than psychology had the major impact on characters and decisions. I wanted the physical world to throw about its very substantial weight." Interestingly enough, in a Ronk story, as we find in the title story "Glass Grapes," those physical objects usually land their "substantial weight" directly on top of a character's psyche. As a result, the character has all their insecurities, petty angers, real fears, hidden joys, and many obsessions squeezed out for readers to behold. And Ronk's characters are nothing if not obsessive. In fact, I would go so far as to say that no contemporary American writer is as skilled at laying bare the inner-workings of an obsessive mind as Martha Ronk. Part of the reason for her success is that her language is so precise and her sentences so deft that the reader has no choice but to follow along until Ronk decides to release them. The result is a trip through the psyche of an acutely aware and fiercely intelligent mind.
Martha Ronk is an extremely distinguished American poet and fiction writer. Her work has garnered critical accolades and numerous awards including, most recently, a 2005 PEN USA Award in Poetry, a 2006 National Poetry Series Award, and a 2007 NEA Fellowship. Ronk is one of the rare writers with equally impressive facility in both poetry and fiction. Due to this facility, her fiction moves with grace, beauty, syntactical rigor, and the same attention to language as our most accomplished poetry. BOA Editions is proud to be the publisher of Martha Ronk's debut short story collection, Glass Grapes and Other Stories. We are pleased to present this sample story from the collection for your reading pleasure. —Peter Conners
In one of my early editorial correspondences with Martha Ronk, she said of Glass Grapes and Other Stories (978-1-934414-13-4): "The main thrust behind the book was to create pieces in which objects rather than psychology had the major impact on characters and decisions. I wanted the physical world to throw about its very substantial weight." Interestingly enough, in a Ronk story, as we find in the title story "Glass Grapes," those physical objects usually land their "substantial weight" directly on top of a character's psyche. As a result, the character has all their insecurities, petty angers, real fears, hidden joys, and many obsessions squeezed out for readers to behold. And Ronk's characters are nothing if not obsessive. In fact, I would go so far as to say that no contemporary American writer is as skilled at laying bare the inner-workings of an obsessive mind as Martha Ronk. Part of the reason for her success is that her language is so precise and her sentences so deft that the reader has no choice but to follow along until Ronk decides to release them. The result is a trip through the psyche of an acutely aware and fiercely intelligent mind.
Martha Ronk is an extremely distinguished American poet and fiction writer. Her work has garnered critical accolades and numerous awards including, most recently, a 2005 PEN USA Award in Poetry, a 2006 National Poetry Series Award, and a 2007 NEA Fellowship. Ronk is one of the rare writers with equally impressive facility in both poetry and fiction. Due to this facility, her fiction moves with grace, beauty, syntactical rigor, and the same attention to language as our most accomplished poetry. BOA Editions is proud to be the publisher of Martha Ronk's debut short story collection, Glass Grapes and Other Stories. We are pleased to present this sample story from the collection for your reading pleasure. —Peter Conners
November 28, 2009
Devastating exploration of stasis and alienation.
February 15, 2011
Beautifully written short stories, but not characters one can warm to. Her detached voice describes alienation well,not my favorite topic.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews