Product Description

The publication of “Notes to My Biographer,” in Zoetrope: All-Story magazine introduced readers to the remarkable voice of Adam Haslett. Nominated as part of a National Magazine Award, broadcast on National Public Radio, performed at venues across the country, the story brought the author widespread recognition.

Now, in his first book, Adam Haslett gives us nine richly varied stories, each suffused with intense emotion and written in a lyric prose alternatively lush and spare. You Are Not a Stranger Here carries its readers into the hearts and minds of people facing life’s most profound dilemmas. We meet an aging inventor still burning with ideas as he makes a final visit to his gay son. A psychiatrist’s encounter with a reluctant patient reveals a young doctor’s own needs and fears. An orphaned boy finds solace in a classmate’s violence. The return of an old lover disturbs the peace between a brother and sister who have lived together for decades.

In settings that range from New England to Great Britain, from Los Angeles to the American West, the stories in this book treat what Faulkner called the old verities and truths of the heart: love and honor, pity and pride, compassion and sacrifice. They do so with heartbreaking precision and an often generous humor, drawing us past the surface of characters’ lives into the moments of decision and recognition that shape them irrevocably. Together these stories constitute a significant achievement by a powerful new writer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #356581 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08
• Released on: 2002-08-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
In his debut story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, Adam Haslett drags into the light subjects often left in the cellar. Most of his stories are told from the viewpoint of the mentally ill (though one, "The Good Doctor," shows us madness from a caregiver's perspective). The rest of the stories deal with closeted homosexuality: boys who are just learning their identity, men who have never come to terms with it. Haslett is an enormously compassionate writer, and shows a lovely, plain-written acuity about his people. His writing is a convincing inside job--he never romanticizes or oversimplifies. In "The Volunteer," an old woman at a care facility is haunted by the voice of an ancestress named Hester: "For more than two decades, Elizabeth Maynard has done exactly as she is told and the voice of Hester, which has cost her so much, comes only quietly and intermittently. It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off."

Haslett has a gift for writing quietly about sensational topics: men cruising each other in the park at night; an abusive, self-hating relationship between two adolescent boys. The stories can get a bit too fancy: the writer can't resist the ironic twist or the surprise ending. Still, this is a beautifully written collection that's as heartfelt as it is intelligent. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly
In this affecting debut collection, Yale Law School student Haslett explores the complex phenomena of depression and mental illness, drawing a powerful connection between those who suffer and those who attempt to alleviate that suffering. In "The Good Doctor," Frank, a young M.D., goes out of his way to discover the origin of his patient's illness, only to learn of both her untreatable pain and his own fears and regrets: "The fact was he still felt like a sponge, absorbing the pain of the people he listened to." In "The Beginnings of Grief," suffering becomes a way of healing when a teenager coming to terms with both his homosexuality and his parents' sudden deaths seeks connection wherever he can find it, even in the pain inflicted by a classmate's violence. Often, Haslett convincingly interweaves the perspectives and lives of seemingly disparate individuals. In "The Volunteer," a teenager's awkward incomprehension in the face of his first sexual encounter bizarrely coincides with the breakdown of a schizophrenic woman he visits after school. Not all of the stories are charged with this kind of emotional complexity, however, and some tend toward the sentimental, as does "The Storyteller," in which the clinically depressed Paul, who feels himself to be nothing but a burden to his wife, Ellen, rediscovers his vitality in a chance encounter with an elderly woman and her dying son. Though the thematic similarity of many of the stories dulls their startling initial impact, this is a strikingly assured first effort.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Those setting collection policy in public libraries are often forced to base their decisions on genre alone and will buy a detective novel, for instance, at the expense of a collection of short stories, especially one by a first-time author. Haslett's debut shows what is wrong with this approach. Courageous and compelling as any in today's fiction, the despairing characters in these nine stories are all related to someone who has left or will leave them, usually owing to mental illness. In "Divination," for instance, a sensitive boy reflects on the precise moment when he became alienated from his family. In "Notes to My Biographer," the narrator, in a burst of manic impulsion, decides to visit a son he has not seen in years. His irascible sense of humor propels the story until we learn that his son treats his inherited disease with medication that the father won't ingest; reconciliation is only possible if the son stops taking his. Such uncompromising and realistic representations of depression and its symptoms are commendable. Too often, the sufferers' loved ones are depicted with lugubrious sobbing, but the narratives move forward with few detours, and readers will turn the pages accordingly. Strongly recommended for mid- and large-sized public libraries and academic literary collections. Edward Keane, Long Island Univ. Lib., Brooklyn, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Touching, Haunting Stories
This debut volume of short stories by Adam Haslett begins with six of the most haunting stories I have read in a long while. The last three short stores, while very good, do not reach the same level as those first ones but it is a relief to step back a little from the power and the pain. Mental illness, grief and loss form a common thread throughout the book. The title of the volume comes from the words of one of the characters but the words of another could just as easily have substituted, "We will survive this". Somehow the characters do survive, just barely and with their pain a throbbing wound, but they do survive and the author brings us gently and persuasively to this understanding that people can and do survive just about anything. The stories should make you cry a little, feel a little empty for a moment, and then give you your breath back as you contemplate their jagged beauty. A gem of a book.

Wonderful collection of stories
Adam Haslett's book You Are Not a Stranger Here is a wonderful collection of nine short stories. All the stories are built around characters that are lonely and isolated from the normal world. There is a sadness to all nine stories that link them together despite the distinctly different settings, characters and situations. I give this book four stars only because some of the stories are so good that they make the others look mediocre. While none of the nine stories is actually mediocre, the outstanding ones show that Haslett is capable of doing better. Haslett's style of writing reminds me of William Faulkner. Haslett's mastery of prose will surely establish him as one of the best new American writers.

No stranger to strange fiction
Adam Haslett's "You Are Not A Stranger Here" is the best collection of short stories I have read in a very long time. These are wonderfully engaging stories, rich with a menagerie of misfit and off-beat (but next-door-neighbour type) characters, each moving through depressive and manic events and circumstances, narrated by an exquisitely-familiar voice. Most of the mini-masterpieces deal with suppressed homosexuality, mental illness taking various shapes and forms, love unrequited, and the curses of extra-sensory perceptions. If only this brilliant wordsmith Haslett had more than one book.