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Sweethearts
Just about fine in tan wrappers. SIGNED - 3rd printing. Author's first book, originally issued in a printing of only 400 copies in 1978. The second printing in 1978 had only 600 copies, and even this, the third printing, was limited to 2,000. A collection of very short, but powerful, pieces. SIGNED on the title page. Phillips was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for her novel 'Night Watch.'
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
56 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1982
144 people want to read
About the author
Jayne Anne Phillips
53 books734 followersJAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, and Quiet Dell. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Winner of an Arts and Letters Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she was inducted into the Academy in 2018. A National Book Award finalist, and twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, she lives in New York and Boston.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 13, 2018
Some of the best poetic prose I've ever read.
quotes:
"Wedding Picture"
"My mother's ankles curve from the hem of a white suit as if the bones were water. Under the cloth her body in its olive skin unfolds. The black hair, the porcelain neck, the red mouth that barely shows its teeth. My mother's eyes are round and wide as a light behind her skin burns them to coals. Her heart makes a sound that no one hears. The sound says each fetus floats, an island in the womb.
My father stands beside her in his brown suit and two-tone shoes. He stands also by the plane in New Guinea in 1944. On its side there is a girl on a swing wearing spike heels and short shorts. Her breasts balloon; the sky opens inside them. Yellow hair smooth as a cats, she is swinging out to him. He glimmers, blinded by the light. Now his big fingers curl inward. He is trying to hold something.
In her hands the snowy Bible hums, nuns swarming a honeyed cell. The husband is an afterthought. Five years since the highschool lover crumpled on the bathroom floor, his sweet heart raw. She's twenty-three, her mother's sick, it's time. My father's heart pounds, a bell in a wrestler's chest. He is almost forty and the lilies are trumpeting. Rising from his shoulders, the cross grows pale and loses its arms in their heads."
quotes:
"Wedding Picture"
"My mother's ankles curve from the hem of a white suit as if the bones were water. Under the cloth her body in its olive skin unfolds. The black hair, the porcelain neck, the red mouth that barely shows its teeth. My mother's eyes are round and wide as a light behind her skin burns them to coals. Her heart makes a sound that no one hears. The sound says each fetus floats, an island in the womb.
My father stands beside her in his brown suit and two-tone shoes. He stands also by the plane in New Guinea in 1944. On its side there is a girl on a swing wearing spike heels and short shorts. Her breasts balloon; the sky opens inside them. Yellow hair smooth as a cats, she is swinging out to him. He glimmers, blinded by the light. Now his big fingers curl inward. He is trying to hold something.
In her hands the snowy Bible hums, nuns swarming a honeyed cell. The husband is an afterthought. Five years since the highschool lover crumpled on the bathroom floor, his sweet heart raw. She's twenty-three, her mother's sick, it's time. My father's heart pounds, a bell in a wrestler's chest. He is almost forty and the lilies are trumpeting. Rising from his shoulders, the cross grows pale and loses its arms in their heads."
September 27, 2016
I found my old copy of this book while packing up for a move. I meant only to glace at a few of these mini-stories (each less than a full page), but I soon found I'd re-read the whole thing. It's easily read at a single sitting.
The best stories are really more prose poems of encapsulated moments, stripped down to their barest essence. Some are extraordinary. "Snowcloud" for instance gives me chills - this brief, enticing glimpse of a bike accident and the intercession of an eccentric stranger. Its three tiny paragraphs have an extraordinary pull, and the final image of the woman's hair is just gorgeous: "She stands gazing down and releases her ragged gold."
The stories "Shaping" and "Pretty" have similar effects, a final image that radiates with power over an otherwise ordinary monent. I liked these three stories especially.
The second half of the book is darker, abberant even, a series of glimpsed people that are confused or enslaved by their own impulses. Some of this half pulls with power too, but for me none of it has the surprising freshness of the best stories in the first half.
The book isn't perfect - in some of the stories I can feel a reaching for effect that isn't quite natural. For me though, the best stories make the whole book worth it. Some stories I'd only give 2 stars, but the best deserve 4 stars, if not more. Overall, I'm giving the book 3 stars to split the difference.
Side Note: Jayne Anne Phillips later expanded some of the stories in Sweethearts to make stories of a more standard length in Black Tickets: Stories. My favorite stories weren't expanded though, probably because they were already perfectly contained in their miniature form as they were. Black Tickets: Stories has a much darker flavor, closer to the second half of Sweethearts in spirit.
The best stories are really more prose poems of encapsulated moments, stripped down to their barest essence. Some are extraordinary. "Snowcloud" for instance gives me chills - this brief, enticing glimpse of a bike accident and the intercession of an eccentric stranger. Its three tiny paragraphs have an extraordinary pull, and the final image of the woman's hair is just gorgeous: "She stands gazing down and releases her ragged gold."
The stories "Shaping" and "Pretty" have similar effects, a final image that radiates with power over an otherwise ordinary monent. I liked these three stories especially.
The second half of the book is darker, abberant even, a series of glimpsed people that are confused or enslaved by their own impulses. Some of this half pulls with power too, but for me none of it has the surprising freshness of the best stories in the first half.
The book isn't perfect - in some of the stories I can feel a reaching for effect that isn't quite natural. For me though, the best stories make the whole book worth it. Some stories I'd only give 2 stars, but the best deserve 4 stars, if not more. Overall, I'm giving the book 3 stars to split the difference.
Side Note: Jayne Anne Phillips later expanded some of the stories in Sweethearts to make stories of a more standard length in Black Tickets: Stories. My favorite stories weren't expanded though, probably because they were already perfectly contained in their miniature form as they were. Black Tickets: Stories has a much darker flavor, closer to the second half of Sweethearts in spirit.
January 13, 2025
Very important to my under grad career ❤️ will always have a place in my heart
March 21, 2009
This book is exclusively one page portraits. I found them somewhat interesting, but even for someone whose favorite author is Raymond Carver, I usually find such brevity unengaging. Also, most reappeared in Black Tickets in some form, either reprinted or expanded upon.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews