{"title":"Joseph Torra","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"gas-station-book-joseph-torra-9780575068032","title":"Gas Station","description":"As Jimi Hendrix and Vietnam rumble on in the background, an Italian-American teenage boy grows up working in his dad's gas station in Massachusetts. In a world full of rear end fluid, floor jacks and leaky gaskets, the narrator is awkward with his father and not too hot at mounting snow tires or dismantling engines. Poetic, poignant, and beautifully observed -- the grease and grime of the gas station, the rhythms of work and talk, are detailed with such precision that the locality becomes universal -- Joseph Torra has written an extraordinary and superb coming-of-age novel in the great American blue-collar tradition, and one which has echoes of another working-class son of Massachusetts, Jack Kerouac.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49625721012497,"sku":"GOR008848486","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50301281992977,"sku":"GOR007197294","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50916202021137,"sku":"GOR008842827","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0575068035.jpg?v=1751262124"},{"product_id":"who-do-you-think-you-are-book-joseph-torra-9781736720219","title":"Who Do You Think You Are?","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eWho Do You Think You Are? Reflections Of A Writer's Life\u003c\/em\u003e, Joseph Torra ponders his thirty plus years as a poet, novelist, editor, publisher, and teacher. With both pathos and humor, Torra discusses the challenges he has faced as an author, husband, parent-and, as a person who struggles with bipolar disease.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe shares stories and insights on: growing up in a working class Italian-American Boston suburb, literary and other artists who have influenced him, painting, music, addiction, the publishing scene-past and present-as well as the importance of mentorships and community.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWho Do You Think You Are?\u003c\/em\u003e, a courageous and frank portrait of an author, benefits all readers who hope to pursue an artistic career of any form.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTorra's characters speak in an almost poetic cadence, said \u003cem\u003eBoston Magazine.\u003c\/em\u003e And Charlotte Innes of the \u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/em\u003e wrote, Torra Offers an intricate, sympathetic, sometimes outraged, always graceful commentary on the larger world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49764018585873,"sku":"CIN173672021XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51049955328273,"sku":"NIN9781736720219","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52137540026641,"sku":"NLS9781736720219","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/173672021X.jpg?v=1751278939"},{"product_id":"my-ground-trilogy-book-joseph-torra-9780983313908","title":"My Ground Trilogy","description":"Joe Torra's loosely connected My Ground Trilogy tells the stories of three working-class, Boston area people - each of whom is trying to crawl out from under. Gas Station is a slice of everyday life that reveals the thoughts of a boy who works more than he plays. Weathering the tedium, frustration and occasional fearsome excitement of events in his immigrant father's business with a kid's interest and an adult's sense of responsibility, the narrator puts the reader in a gritty, greasy garage that somehow relates to everyone's transition out of childhood. In the second novel, Tony Luongo is a slick-dealing salesman in Pratt's department store who juggles the effects of his Italian-American upbringing, marriage, parenthood and his own obsessive sexuality with post-war social and political change swirling past him. The endless stream of mental observations brings the reader through territory that is as real and affecting as it is unsettling. In the final installment, My Ground, Torra again explores the working class experience in urban Massachusetts. Forty-year-old Laurel Bell, negotiates through past trauma and present depression to support herself as a poor single woman. Simple, yet vivid detail reveals her mental and emotional process as she constantly tries to reconcile the past and present sufficiently to make sense of her reality. Hubert Selby, Jr said The story telling has a wonderful sense of imagination, intelligence, economy and originality. Torra's evocation of the. twisted white-trash milieu is brilliantly done, creating an uneasy portrait of life on the fringes of sanity and society, wrote the London Times and, the New York Times Book Review stated, If words were lug nuts, Joseph Torra would spin them in ways the guys down at the garage never dreamed of.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50369921417489,"sku":"CIN0983313903G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52659867123985,"sku":"NLS9780983313908","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53251500769553,"sku":"NIN9780983313908","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0983313903.jpg?v=1751140482"},{"product_id":"call-me-waiter-book-joseph-torra-9780978515652","title":"Call Me Waiter","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50371034611985,"sku":"CIN097851565XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/097851565X.jpg?v=1751332012"},{"product_id":"gas-station-book-joseph-torra-9780944072677","title":"Gas Station","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50372725997841,"sku":"CIN0944072674G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0944072674.jpg?v=1750947926"},{"product_id":"they-say-book-joseph-torra-9780979299902","title":"They Say","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50376281751825,"sku":"CIN097929990XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/097929990X.jpg?v=1750852036"},{"product_id":"tony-luongo-book-joseph-torra-9780575068483","title":"Tony Luongo","description":"Tony Luongo, top salesman of major appliances in Pratt's department store, Somerville, Massachusetts, is on the shop floor at just the right time. It's the mid-sixties, consumer demand for new domestic goods seems insatiable, relations with staff at the store are free and easy, and Luongo, who has refined his sales technique to an art form, can shift more vacuum cleaners than anyone. Then Luongo falls for Audrey. They marry, have kids, start a family, and the seventies arrive, with the recession, followed by the spread of Aids - and for Luongo, constantly battling with the legacies, tensions, drives and desires that spring, in part, from his own upbringing, it's a time when tough choices have to be made ...Joseph Torra, a major new American voice, once again explores the lives of a post-war Italian-American family, in a brilliant, expansive and fast-flowing narrative that has echoes of another working-class son of Massachusetts, Jack Kerouac.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51232679624977,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51232680608017,"sku":"GOR008663042","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0575068485.jpg?v=1750699590"},{"product_id":"my-ground-book-joseph-torra-9780575068490","title":"My Ground","description":"Following the teenage boy in Gas Station and the department store salesman in Tony Luongo, the narrator in the third and final part of the My Ground trilogy is a middle aged female housecleaner. Again, Torra's concern is with the lives of blue collar workers in Massachusetts, and with the attempts of an individual to carve an identity for his or herself in a harsh world.  My Ground is the story of Lauren Bell's less than stable life of failed relationships, a difficult childhood, weight problems and ECT treatment. It's bleaker than Gas Station and Tony Luongo, but the narrator's voice is as powerful - again, there's the sense of the span of a human life skilfully compressed into a short novel, and the various strands are pulled together at the close into a horrific climax.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51317279424785,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51317279916305,"sku":"GOR008817423","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0575068493.jpg?v=1751104819"},{"product_id":"what-it-takes-book-joseph-torra-9781935835226","title":"What It Takes","description":"Fiction. An elderly man retires and watches his wife slowly die from cancer. WHAT IT TAKES chronicles his grief. Sometimes he tries his best to surmount his grief; sometimes he wearies and coaxes his own end along. He tries to fathom who his grown children have become, especially his son, Freddy, who in turn is attempting to salvage his own life. The old man also travels down his memories growing up with his brothers--one of whom met an untimely end, another layer of grief--and his parents. He tries to navigate the will to live, the desire to be close to others and at the same time wrap himself into a spiral of withdrawal. Torra takes us on a journey in this man's mind as he grapples with finding out--maybe too late, or possibly too soon--what it takes to not just survive, but to live.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52756237517073,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52756238106897,"sku":"NIN9781935835226","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781935835226.jpg?v=1763575653"},{"product_id":"time-being-ii-book-joseph-torra-9781935835394","title":"Time Being II","description":"Written between October 2020 and October 2021, this long poem\/journal\/improvisation records in one long rush a year's worth of observations and events. Torra's eyes and ears pull in everything about life that comes his way - Covid, a presidential election, teaching, fatherhood, family, food, writing, art, music, the urban environment, dreams, and a growing interest in the Tao. In keeping open to everything, he attunes the reader to the art of living according to the Tao. Time Being II reflects Torra's compression of a year into a rhythmic distillate.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52859252900113,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52859252965649,"sku":"NIN9781935835394","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781935835394.jpg?v=1765137326"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-joseph-torra.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}