In the Driver's Seat by Helen Simpson

In the Driver's Seat by Helen Simpson

A dark, dazzling, surprisingly funny new collection of stories ("Masterly" --Adam Mars Jones, The Observer; "A virtuoso performance" --Jane Shilling, The Sunday Telegraph) about single women and wives in various phases of midlife--anxious mothers, besotted mothers, beset mothers--in a (futile) search for security and consolation.

Helen Simpson's stories are short but by no means small. One story takes the Iraq war as its subject; another describes a smoker's reprieve from death by lung cancer; in another, a simple tale of home maintenance--a woman in a conversation with the carpenter replacing her door after a break-in--becomes a deftly sketched study of grief. In still another, Simpson manages the seemingly impossible--producing laughter at terminal illness and untimely death (this might be the first story in which the amputation of a limb provides a happy ending). And finally, the story entitled "Constitutional"--a pun on one of the word's meanings: a walk taken for the benefit of one's health--deals with memory, family, Alzheimer's, oak trees, pregnancy for the over-forties, stolen photographs, and crossword puzzles.

Helen Simpson's stories move and disturb us as they light up the human gift for making the best of it--whatever it is.

Helen Simpson is the author of four previous collections of short stories--Getting a Life, Four Bare Legs in a Bed (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), Dear George, and In the Driver's Seat--as well as one novel, Flesh and Grass. She is the recipient of the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307277565
ISBN 10	0307277569
Title	In the Driver's Seat
Author	Helen Simpson
Series	Vintage Contemporaries
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2008-05-06
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.