Product Description

An emotionally powerful book; it is organic, surprising, and edgy in a way that will appeal to male readers as well as female readers. It has the potential to be groundbreaking in its raw, honest portrayal of a just-barely-functioning family. Billy Lombardo is interested in the beauty of words. He is also a great observer of the world around him, and he is exquisite and precise in getting that world onto the page.

Billy Lombardo is the author of The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories, a Chicago Tribune “Best Fiction of 2005” selection. His novel Man With Two Arms is due from The Overlook Press in 2010.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #622945 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 166 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780976717751
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Billy Lombardo is the author of The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories, a Chicago Tribune Best Fiction of 2005 selection. He teaches in the English department at The Latin School of Chicago. He founded and directs Polyphony HS, a student-run national literary magazine for high school writers and editors. His novel, Man With Two Arms is due from Overlook.

Customer Reviews

A Rare Gem
I have never reviewed a book before but I felt so strongly about this one that I was compelled to write my first. This is really a gem and I feel I have gotten in on the bottom floor of an amazing writer. The stories are spare and beautiful and the "novel in short stories" concept is perfect for this very tortured exploration of what it feels like to be inside a family that is falling apart. I could not put this book down and recommend it to all readers. It contains nuggets of truth like poetry does, or the best fiction, which this is.

Recounting and Accounting for Loss
Alan, Audrey and their three children are intact, if not a little too busy, as they juggle the pressure of career and family. And then, their daughter is abducted and goes missing. With burning hope and worn expectancy, the family tries to carry on, but the loss rends marital mask and veil exposing the terrible and tragic machinery of grief. With perfectly locked rhythms, Lombardo's narrative accounts and recounts for the proximate cause of loss to illustrate the quietly complex opacity of most of our decisions. Hard words go unspoken while Alan and Audrey quiver down the end-days of marriage, and the future is but a doomed faint forestalling. Feverish, and increasingly fractured, the marriage moves along greased grooves as they come to terms with what has happened to them. In the end, the reader leaves with a new appreciation for the fragility of family, and how life's sharp corners can overwhelm and crush it.

Couldn't Put It Down
I couldn't put this book down and finished it in just over 24 hours. Lombardo brilliantly uses seemingly small details to paint a picture of a family life. I have never read anything quite like it. I can't wait for his next book!