Ideas of Heaven

(Paperback, Main)

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

Set in modern-day America and France, Renaissance Italy and Boxer Rebellion China, thesestories embrace whole lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. JoanSilber skilfully and subtly ties one story to the next, as a minor element in one becomes amajor element in the next, until the last is tied convincingly to the first. Intense in subject yetrestrained in tone, they are about longings - often held for years - and the ways in which sexand religion can become parallel forms of dedication and comfort.

From a wannabe dancer in contemporary New York City to missionaries in China, Ideas ofHeaven showcases Joan Silber's extraordinary deftness as she illuminates love, faith and sexwith great originality and profundity.

'Joan Silber renders the thirsts and devotions of six lives with clarifying exactitude. The sometimes gentle, sometimes raw connections between these people will move you, and the ardour with which they yearn for their respective heavens will break your heart. ' - Anthony Doerr

Reviews

'Joan Silber renders the thirsts and devotions of six lives with clarifyingexactitude. The sometimes gentle, sometimes raw connections between these peoplewill move you, and the ardour with which they yearn for their respective heavens willbreak your heart. ' - Anthony Doerr

'[There are] books whose pieces are linked not by mere repetition of the protagonist butby genuine artfulness and imaginative necessity: Joan Silber's splendid new Ideas ofHeaven, for example, in which the smallest wisp of one story will, in the next, sometimesblaze to full, unexpected life.' - New York Times Book Review

'Love, like these beautiful stories, offers devotion, consolation and transcendence.' -Boston Globe

'Luminous, stunning...The stories gather wholeness through deepening meditations ondevotion...and through the startling use of language.' - Chicago Tribune

Author Bio

Joan Silber is the author of nine books of fiction, most recently Secrets of Happiness. Improvement was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was listed as one of the year's best books by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, the Seattle Times and Kirkus Reviews. She lives in New York. Find out more at joansilber.net.