Beautiful Soon Enough

by Margo Berdeshevsky

Winner of FC2's American Book Review/Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize
 
Margo Berdeshevsky’s Beautiful Soon Enough is a collection of hypnotic stories that capture the lives—worldly, sexual, obsessive—of twenty–three arresting women.These are snapshots and stories of women on the outside, looking in; of women content to end their affairs; of young women learning the power of seduction; and of older women reminiscing about past loves. They are women who cannot live without love’s embrace, and women who have found it and feel that it is never enough. They are women "of a certain age," as the French might say, and women with naked hearts, of any age.Berdeshevsky’s tales cross the from beds in Paris to the roofs of Havana, from Venice Beach to the hills of Dubrovnik. With settings as varied as the characters they depict, these tales illuminate the lives of women desperate for a balance between love, comfort, and freedom. Personal, driven, and lyrical, together they are Beautiful Soon Enough.

Genres: Short Stories

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

MARGO BERDESHEVSKY, born in New York City, often lives and writes in Paris. Her brand new book is IT IS STILL BEAUTIFUL TO HEAR THE HEART BEAT from SALMON POETRY in Ireland!! Her recent book was KNEEL SAID THE NIGHT(a hybrid book in half-notes) from Sundress Publications. Her other collections include "Before the Drought," from Glass Lyre Press, a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Berdeshevsky is author as well of "Between Soul & Stone" and "But a Passage in Wilderness" (Sheep Meadow Press). Her book of illustrated stories, "Beautiful Soon Enough," received the first Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Award for FC2 (University of Alabama Press). She is also the recipient of the grand prize for the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, while other honors include the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, and selection for honorable mention in poetry from the Eric Hoffer Book award. Her work appears in Poetry International, New Letters, The Night Heron Barks, Kenyon Review, Plume, Scoundrel Time, The Collagist, Tupelo Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Southern Humanities Review, Harbor Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, The American Journal of Poetry, Jacar—One, Mānoa, Pirene’s Fountain, Big Other, and Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, Bracken, among many others. In Europe and the UK, her works have been seen in The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Wolf, Europe, Siècle 21, Confluences Poétiques, Recours au Poème, Levure Littéraire, and Under the Radar. Her “Letters from Paris” have appeared for many years in Poetry International online, for example: https://poetryinternationalonline.com... She may be found reading from her books in London, Paris, New York City, Los Angeles, Honolulu, at literary festivals, and/or somewhere new in the world. See https://linktr.ee/instamargomargo and For more information, go to her website http://margoberdeshevsky.com

 

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection -- each story a jewel in its own right, set to perfection in relation to the whole. See my review at Necessary Fiction -- http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/B...

[Margo Berdeshevsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Margo Berdeshevsky understands the diabolical complexity of the human heart, and how eros is a form of intelligence as well as a drive. Writing with lyric accuracy and necessary forgiveness about the turmoils of love, she also declares the 8th Deadly Sin: the refusal of intense experience." —SVEN BIRKERTS

"Margo Berdeshevsky’s "Beautiful Soon Enough" is a thrillingly cutting-edge work of photos and short short stories flowing together into an extended erotic dream that limns the inner lives of women deeply yearning for connection and authenticity. This is a splendid book..."—ROBERT OLEN BUTLER

"Margo Berdeshevsky is a mature poet and world citizen...writing with emotional power ... woven with extraordinary awareness of what is precisely not beautiful in human life. So MUCH verbal beauty, with the eternal quality of the tale or fable." —MARILYN HACKER

[Miari Davidson · Rating 0.25 out of 5]

This book is nonsensical. Some stories try way too hard to be poetic. I’ve read and re-read an entry to make sense of what’s said, what’s not said, and what’s trying to be said. This is not a book I would recommend.