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Giovanna's
86 Circles
and Other Stories
by
Paola Corso
Hardcover
ISBN: 0-299-21280-7
University of Wisconsin Press, 2005
150 pages
Best Short Stories of 2005
in The
Montserrat
Review
John Gardner Fiction Book
Award Finalist
Pushcart Press Editors Book
Award Nomination
A Sons of
Italy
National Book Club Selection
On
The Young Adult Top 40 Fiction Titles of Pennsylvania School Librarian Association
On Amazon.com's Recommended List of Short Stories for Rushed Readers
These
ten magical stories feature Italian American women and girls who draw from their
culture's folklore to bring life and a sense of wonder to a seemingly barren
region of the Rust Belt. Each story catapults the ordinary into something
original and unpredictable.
"...
memorable and entrancing...powerful in the moment thanks to the imagery's
dream-like density."
—Publishers
Weekly
"Corso
is a captivating storyteller in the tradition of Italian fairytale makers.
Giovanna's 86 Circles heartily entertains."
—Rain
Taxi
"With
Giovanna's 86 Circles, Corso joins a
fine cast of American women authors of imaginative writing."
—Margin:
Exploring Modern Magical Realism
"Giovanna's
86 Circles consistently
surprises and delights."
—Books
for Readers
"Beautiful
writing, strong female characters, and adolescent themes will attract good
readers to this little gem of a book."
—Pennsylvania
School Library Association
"Corso's
strong ethnic narratives are reminiscent of those by Toni Morrison."
—Pittsburgh
Magazine
"Accessible,
big-hearted fiction. Corso has a Catholic imagination. Like Springsteen, she
tends toward the apotheosis of everyday people struggling with faith of some
species."
—The City Paper
"With
her swift and gritty sentences, Corso conjures a world where houses were painted
gray since the mill soot would turn them that color anyway. It was a humble if
pinched society, down on its luck but at least rich in tradition. Corso honors
that fact here, and then some."
—Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
"Paola
Corso knows the secret to surviving in every small fading
Western Pa.
town: a mix of quiet courage and a
wild imagination. Generation to generation, the women of Giovanna's
86 Circles somehow find the power to redeem the everyday."
—Stewart
O'Nan,
author of The Good Wife and Snow
Angels
"Corso
mixes myth and reality, fable and grit to illustrate the beauty, the power, and
the necessity of storytelling. She makes a major contribution to the growing
body of female Italian-American literature."
—Rita
Ciresi,
author of Sometimes I Dream in Italian and Mother Rocket
"Corso's
prose is inviting in its clarity and music as she creates a world that is at
once familiar and strange. Her collection is at the same level of literary
achievement as Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter
of Maladies."
—David
Huddle,
author of La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl and The Story of a Million Years
"Corso
invites us all, but especially those from the working class, to remember and to
dream."
—Michelle
Tokarczyk,
author of
Working-Class Women in the Academy
Read
an Excerpt.
Order
this book from Amazon
or BarnesandNoble,
or call the
University
of
Wisconsin Press Chicago distributor
toll free at 1-800-621-2736.
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