A Perfect Stranger: And Other Stories

by Roxana Robinson

Book Overview

In Roxana Robinson's lucid and elegant prose, her characters' inner worlds open up to us, revealing private emotional cores that are familiar in their needs, their secrets, and their longings. These... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375509186
• ISBN13: 9780375509186
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 235 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A delectable read!

Roxana Robinson has authored two short story collections, a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, and three novels. Sweetwater is one of my top-ten all-time favorite novels. So it was with great expectation that I began reading A Perfect Stranger and Other Stories. And what a delectable read it was. Robinson is as proficient at writing short fiction as she is writing the novel. And she seems to be equally as comfortable. Each story in Robinson's collection immerses the reader into a world of relationships where she introduces us to her rich, complex characters and then allows us to become an intimate voyeur in the fabric of their thoughts and lives. It is impossible to discuss each story in a collection so I will mention my favorites. "The Pilgrimage" paints a picture so strong, I lived the emotions of the woman as her fantasy abruptly vanished and she lived her humiliation. "Treatment" is about vulnerability, the facing of our own mortality. But though all the stories are superb, and everyone, for their own reasons, will have a favorite, mine is "Choosing Sides." Love is a choice; a conscious decision. And if that choice is a child-it's forever. A Perfect Stranger and Other Stories is a book to be read, the words savored and then read again and again and again. Roxana Robinson is truly a gifted storyteller.

Excellent collection!

Roxanna Robinson explores relationship conflicts, unexpected life tragedies with such clear vision, precise detail, you feel placed inside each story. She doesn't hide behind turgid language, but instead writes with economy. There is no ego in her voice, no self-important style. Her command of language feels confident, and her empathy for the plight of her characters is palpable and contagious. The collection is book-ended with two brilliant stories. The first, Family Christmas, is told from the viewpoint of child who visits her wealthy WASP grandparents for Christmas. Ms. Robinson can slip right into a young girl's world and has a unique way of describing how a child sieves information. The world appears safe, ordered, protected, but then a minor incident occurs with the servants that jolts the atmosphere, inspires a small but important life epiphany--everything is not what it appears to be. It is a perfect story to start this collection because it portends a thread line of themes to come. While Ms. Robinsons starts us off the collection inside the mind of a child who feels like a stranger, she leaves us with a story, A Perfect Stranger, about a older household guest who in fact is a stranger. He is a visiting speaker for a small town music festival, and is staying with the chairman of the lecture committee. The story offers charming insight into the world of New York country living-- the desperate need to fit in, do one's job well, appear appropriate. It centers around the anxiety that fills a household when a perfect stranger moves in as temporary guest. But soon an irony becomes quite apparent. Just who are the strangers? This man, or this couple? A perfect story to end this beautifully rendered collection, because it summarizes the feeling weaved seamlessly throughout the collection. Do we really know our best friend, our child, our lover, our own bodies? And what happens when suddenly something familiar turns into a stranger? All of these stories are unique, packed with tension and filled to the brim with emotion. And that is why I think Roxanna Robinson is such a master of the short story. She is not afraid of emotion. She delivers it boldly, with such detail and intimacy you feel as though you personally know each character, because their emotional truths are your emotional truths.

The Bitter Beauty of Life in all its Perfect Strangeness

"It was the realization that what he'd thought he'd known about her was not the truth. She'd had a secret life, running right next to his, fast, black, lethal." Roxana Robinson's latest collection of short stories is not for the faint of heart. With powerful, gripping meditations on such weighty subjects as premature death, extramarital affairs, and unrelenting depression, this is not a book that can be read straight through in one sitting. Instead, each of the thirteen offerings should be read slowly so that its meaning can marinate, breathe on its own, and then pass purposefully through the core of its reader --- every carefully chosen word quietly taking shape at its own pace and each reflective moment tragically beautiful and bittersweet in its own way. Unlike many anthologies that often contain stories of assorted merit, Robinson's most recent collection is solid from start to finish. Her characters are introspective, imperfect, and endearingly human -- each imbued with a personality-specific combination of selfishness and gracious frailty, and each at the mercy of life's haphazard unfolding. Similarly, her interconnected musings on love, betrayal, loss, and fear are so shocking in their blunt sincerity and so blazing in their dead-on depiction of true-to-life events, that even the most jaded of readers are sure to feel a tightening of the chest at certain moments within each story. Robinson's true talent, of course, lies in her ability to capture the eternal and the inexplicable in one tightly woven punch of a sentence. In simple and straightforward language, she holds nothing back in describing the true grit of what is and what might be, and as a result, she not only grabs our attention at the onset of each story but maintains it through to the end as well, in a gentle yet vice-like grip that attacks our consciousness and gnaws away at our thoughts long after the last page is turned. What we are left with is a book that must be read again and again, written by a writer worthy of tremendous praise and hopefully another book contract in the near future. Although all of the stories in this collection are worthwhile reads, there are a few that stand out above the rest. "Intersection" is a multilayered meditation on depression and the different methods people often take to temper its effects. "The Treatment" is a harrowing depiction of a woman who suddenly is confronted with her own mortality after being diagnosed with a grave illness. The short yet commanding story is a macabre rumination on what it feels like to suffer alone with only your hopes, fears, and other people's judgments to keep you company. In "Assez," a husband's betrayal (an extramarital affair) is at the crux of a story about a couple and their attempt to save their marriage by spending the summer in France with two old friends. Much like the calm before a storm, the two manage to delicately find their way back to each other before their return to reality and, inevitably, t

Brilliant Collection!

The thirteen stories in Roxana Robinson's newest collection all share an amazing elegance, clear insight into human nature, and at times, breath-stopping tension. In "Family Christmas," a young girl witnesses an event that opens her eyes to an adult world full of complexities, contradictions and class divisions. In "The Face Lift," a woman gets together with an old school friend who possesses a vitality she once envied. The woman soon discovers things are not always what they seem and no one is impervious to danger. The ending of this one is brilliant. In "Choosing Sides," a woman not only finds out her son has fathered a child but that he doesn't want to stick around to parent it. The woman must decide if she wants the child in her life. Two of the most riveting stories in the collection, "At the Beach" and "The Treatment," showcase Robinson's command of a story and how much tension it should deliver and when. "At the Beach" captures perfectly the panic experienced by a beach full of people who for one moment fear the worst has happened, and "The Treatment" stars a woman with a terminal illness who eventually feels forced to protect her faith in her body's ability to heal. I cannot say enough about how powerful and beautifully written this collection is. A fully satisfying read straight through.

A Master of the Form

Robinson's newest short story collection is sublime. She has that rare ability to notice just the right telling nuance, deviation of tone, or perfect detail that bring her characters to life and to confict and to resolution in a mere handful of pages.