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Tiny Ladies

Autor Adam Klein
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 20 feb 2003
Carrie hasn?t always made the best decisions in her life. But her affair with Victor, one of her clients when she worked as a caseworker in San Francisco, had disastrous results. Years later, handling cases in the midst of the frozen winters of the Mid-West, Carrie is assigned Hannah as a client. Carrie recognises in her a kindred spirit also trying to escape a troubled past. Both Carrie and Hannah know what it is to be surrounded by violence. They know the mental scars can last longer than any physical mark. As they try to work through their respective traumas, Carrie becomes increasingly aware that her past has, literally, come back to haunt her. Could that shadowy figure she?s seen be Victor, returning to claim her, and drag her back to her old life of addiction and crime? Or has he come back for revenge? Tiny Ladies is a stark and suspenseful novel about remorse, the ironies of intervention and the terrible courage it sometimes takes to start again.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781852424046
ISBN-10: 1852424044
Pagini: 224
Dimensiuni: 132 x 198 x 17 mm
Ediția:Main
Editura: Profile
Colecția Serpent's Tail
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom

Notă biografică

Adam Klein studied creative writing at the University of Iowa and San Francisco State University. His work has appeared in Men on Men 5 and BOMB magazine. He is also a musician, recording and performing with his band, Roman Evening. He lives in San Francisco.

Recenzii

?The writing is often brutally exquisite. Carrie?s numbered despair is very skillfully rendered, and the gradually accreting structure of the numerous flashback scenes carry an impressive raw emotional charge? Kirkus Reviews ?Klein?s delicate yet steely prose captures the complexities of fractured lives, while spinning a captivating yarn. An original and impressive slice of dark Americana? Big Issue ?One of the most disturbing and arresting books I have come across in some time... In muted and almost musical prose, eerily suspenseful but miraculously lacking in melodrama, Adam Klein?s novel charts the life of a strangely sympathetic character attempting to survive herself and her circumstances... [an] engrossing and beautifully written book? Observer

Extras

Tiny Ladies by Adam KleinLeadtext: For some people, trouble runs so deep in them no part is left unaffected. You spend your time trying to help them fix a thing here or there, but they cut you like a handful of shards. People are fragile; once they're broken you can't piece them back. Not that anyone has the time to try, at least not those of us working for the state. We're wearied by quotas, the endless cycling of people through the system. Concern is invariably measured, and that, they will tell you, is how it has to be. The world generates more need than satisfaction; there's simply not enough to go around. Be cautious with care. Sparing. That's what I've learned, and I'm happy to have learned it. Frances says, "Carrie, you don't have to tell your story to get your clients to share theirs." I don't answer her. What she says is not unfamiliar; she says it with brusque concern. But her reminder is crushing. I have been a caseworker for seven years, and it always comes to this point--a vantage point--of who sits behind the desk and who is in the chair. It's give or take, and you can't do both.That, of course, raises another point: only the blind are willing to lead the blind. And often they don't want to. Just because someone's had a tough life, some struggles of their own, doesn't make them empathetic. Empathy is hard won, rare. Frances finds empathy dangerous, disorienting. But if you've survived--even if you don't know how--you might have something to offer someone who doesn't believe they can survive. You're a kind of example, a museum piece. Something suddenly valuable in you, admirable. When I walk into the office, I can't help but think of my co-workers, at least the good ones, as artifacts; they seem removed from their lives except to exemplify their history, convey its lessons. Their bad choices make them good counsel.I started doing casework in San Francisco. They interviewed me before a panel of eight representatives from various field offices. They put a heavy, gray, reel-to-reel recorder at the center of the table and sat sipping from Styrofoam cups. "Why do you want to work for the Department of Social Services?" a young woman asked. The left side of her face drooped, as though she had a stroke or had been in some kind of accident. She was hard to understand, but I didn't ask her to repeat herself. When I smiled at her, she averted her eyes, so I stopped smiling. Through most of the interview I sat quietly, looking at each of the panelists' faces. Their inquiries were strangely laconic, their silences more demanding than their questions.Feeling pressed to respond, I answered, "I feel guilty not helping people who need it. When I needed it, someone was there for me." They suddenly stiffened as though to dam a flood of potentialities in my answer. Their expressions turned unenthusiastic, like a wary parent, a distracted police officer. Just the facts, ma'am. They had done this for years; they asked their questions, biting them off before they could provide revelations. Not one organization in America can ask the pertinent questions. And if they stumble on one, just by accident, there's an automatic shutdown in the person who has asked it. The parts just settle and turn off.So when I got the job, and they told me about the pool of two thousand applicants, I said, "You've made a mistake." But I was wrong. They didn't want any more than what they got. They sent the recording to Sacramento where my answers--and my silences--were impartially scored. If they'd made a mistake, it was not irreparable. There were 1,999 people waiting for my position.