Beautifully crafted and movingly told, the stories in Talking in the Dark read like small exquisite novels. From betrayal to sacrifice, obsession to abandonment, each tale speaks the truth of the underside of love, evoking images of lowered voices and shared confessions. A single mother, haunted by loneliness and self-doubt, sleeps with her daughter's teenage boyfriend, and, in a scene of frightening family tension, turns her rage not toward the husband who abandoned her, but toward her daughter. A tennis player experiencing her first love becomes the victim of a young man's dangerous obsession.
In prose filled with the subterfuges of desire and need, vibrant with the promise of love's birth or rebirth, Laura Glen Louis exposes the deepest chords of intimacy and imagines worlds that are layered and complete. Talking in the Dark showcases her original voice, one that arrives fully mature--incisive, unsparing, and ultimately hopeful.

Laura Glen Louis won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in 1990 for her first short story. Her second story, "Fur," was selected by Tobias Wolff for Best American Short Stories 1994 and "Her Slow and Steady," was a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 1997. Louis emigrated from Hong Kong at the age of six, and lives on the West Coast.

Categories

• Fiction / Literary
• Fiction / Short Stories (single author)
• Fiction / Sagas
• Fiction

Product Details

ISBN: 9780156007658
ISBN-10: 0156007657
Publisher: Mariner Books
Publication Date: June 19th, 2002
Pages: 228
Language: English

PRAISE FOR TALKING IN THE DARK

"The excitement of reading Laura Glen Louis' debut story collection . . . derives not only from its prose but also from the possibilities she sees in her characters."--The Washington Post Book World
"The individuals in Laura Glen Louis's [collection] are characters for whom the experience of love demands the ultimate migration-from safety to omni-present danger. . . . Superb and wise stories."--The New York Times Book Review
"Louis' sophisticated and fluid use of a shifting point-of-view works to underscore the complexity of what might at first appear to be a simple tale."--San Francisco Chronicle
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