Terrific Mother: Faber Stories
By (Author) Lorrie Moore
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
3rd June 2019
7th March 2019
Main
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
Fiction: general and literary
813.6
Paperback
80
Width 111mm, Height 160mm, Spine 5mm
61g
Adrienne is living in a puritanical age, when the best compliment a childless woman can get is: 'You'd make a terrific mother'. That's when she goes to her friends' Labor Day picnic and accidentally kills their baby.
The shock of this scene is expertly packed into two brief paragraphs. What follows is Adrienne's retreat from life and her attempt to return to it.
Her sharp scepticism about the people around her is achingly funny. Yet beyond derision there is forgiveness and something along the lines of love.
Lorrie Moore, after serving for almost three decades as the Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been named the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Moore has received numerous grants and awards, from among others: the Lannan Foundation, the National Books Critics Circle, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize.