The Blonde on the Train

by Eleanor Lerman

This stunning collection of short stories is a testament to the talent of Eleanor Lerman. From Greenwich Village in the '60s or rooftops in Manhattan to an airport in the Midwest, these everyday adventures explore the disenchantment of this world accompanied by love and hope and humor. Joan Larkin comments: "Equally attentive to the odd details of human behavior and the deep longings at their source, Lerman's stories make me want to go on reading, and leave me somehow hopeful." The Blonde on the Train evokes memories and emotions while creating new imaginings, and inspires readers to create their own adventures. Open this book you ll be hooked!

Genres: Fiction

157 pages, paperback

First published January 20, 2009

About the author

Eleanor Lerman is a writer who lives in New York. Her first book of poetry, Armed Love (Wesleyan University Press, 1973), published when she was twenty-one, was nominated for a National Book Award. She has since published four other award-winning collections of poetry—Come the Sweet By and By (University of Massachusetts Press, 1975); The Mystery of Meteors (Sarabande Books, 2001); Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds (Sarabande Books, 2005); and The Sensual World Re-Emerges (Sarabande Books, 2010), along with The Blonde on the Train (Mayapple Press, 2009) a collection of short stories. She was awarded the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and the Nation magazine for the year's most outstanding book of poetry for Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds and received a 2007 Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2011 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her first novel, Janet Planet, based on the life of Carlos Castaneda, was published by Mayapple Press in 2011. Her latest collection of poetry, Strange Life,was published by Mayapple in 2015. Since then, her novel, Radiomen (The Permanent Press, 2016) was awarded the John W. Campbell Prize for the Best Book of Science Fiction. Her next novel, The Stargazer's Embassy, was released in July 2017. Her most recent novel, Satellite Street, will be released in October 2019.

Reviews

[Vilian Claro]

The Blonde on the Train is a beautifully written collection of short stories that captures the complexity of everyday life in a thoughtful and memorable way. Eleanor Lerman has a wonderful ability to take ordinary moments and fill them with emotion, humor, longing, and unexpected meaning.

[Andrew]

In these stories, relationships — whether between lovers, friends, or family — are essential. Creative labor is also essential, it seems, for a happy existence, as working with one’s hands trumps the daily grind of office life. And yet, while the messages that run throughout these stories are quite similar, the means by which Lerman delivers them varies greatly. The result is a diverse — yet comfortably familiar — collection of tales as well as a memorable cast of characters.