WHERE THINGS ARE
WHEN YOU LOSE THEM
In these twelve stories, Martin Golan delves into the nature of loss, from the mundane, like misplacing your keys, to the heartbreaking, like losing your youthful promise, how you though your life would turn out.
With a reporter's eye for detail and a poet's ear for language, Golan takes us through a landscape familiar to anyone who has experienced a moment when something changes inside you that you can't quite name, except to know you aren't the person you were before.
As we tour this landscape of loss we find, in the end, a bit of redemption and a chance at peace. Loss, we discover, comes with being human, with any life lived fully and well. | |
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A Glimpse Inside:
When Annie fell off the mountain she didn't make a sound. We were hiking, and had stopped at a waterfall. Annie, in typical fashion, decided to scale the nearly horizontal rocks to enjoy the view. After clambering all the way up she waved .... I remember how small she looked up against the boulders, this woman who loomed so large in my life at that time.
--- When Annie Fell Off The Mountain
"ANNIE," DESCRIBED AS "A LOVE STORY BEFORE ROE V. WADE," WAS READ BY THE AUTHOR TO AN OVERFLOW CROWD AT WATCHUNG BOOKSELLERS. MORE READINGS WILL BE POSTED HERE WHEN WE HAVE TIME.
The two men had known each other for more than twenty years but had never shared a meal together without their wives. Roger chose the place, and it turned out to be a dark and musty bar, the kind that smells damply of sex and regret ...
--- The Loneliness of Men | |
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------------------------------------------------------ Cover photo by Montclair artist Peter Jacobs ----------------------------------------------------- |
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Praise for Golan's writing:
"Martin Golan writes of contemporary marriage with humor and reckless candor. He voices our marital anxieties,
its frustrations, losses and joys. Somewhere between the lies we tell each other and those we tell ourselves, Golan
finds a vast human neediness for romantic love."
-- National Book Award finalist Ken Kalfus |
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"... a dozen short-but-rich literary gems"
-- TaRessa Stovall, Montclair Times
"Mr. Golan ... has two gifts that relatively few writers have: an ear for the way people really talk (and think). And he can tell a story.
As well, he's smart enough to tell the story that always stands up to the test of time: human relationships. Adult love, lust, and greed. Sometimes in Cheever country, sometimes Carver (his endings, like Ray Carver's, are often a twist of reality's knife, not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to draw noticeable blood). Oh, and he has another gift: he can portray all his characters with equal affection, regardless of age, gender, and their foibles.
Best line: 'A woman in a pink housecoat looking down from a window decided to light a cigarette.'
This is one of the finest (and most engaging) story collections I've read in the past year."
-- Philip Wagner, The Iconoclast.
"... a precisely written book that shimmers in its humanity. This is no tough-guy read. Golan has crafted deeply wrought and affecting stories that point up the human condition in a way that made this reader look closely, then again, at what is often taken for granted about love: its ultimate rise and fall, which is the core of these twelve enticing stories."
- Susan Tepper, author of Blue Edge
"Surprising ... refreshing "
-- BookList |
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