Bøger af Gregory Spatz

At the heart of What Could Be Saved is the culture of the violin world-its beauty, myth-making, magic, romance and deceit, as well as its history and ethos of perfection at any cost. In stories and novellas matched end-to-end like the twinned or "bookmatched" pieces of tonewood that separately comprise a violin, What Could Be Saved winds its way through the hopes and dreams of builders, dealers and players caught up in the violin trade, a trade that is so unlike any other in the world. From the story of a young man who refuses to follow in his father's footsteps as a violin builder, to the magical realism of the story told in the point of view of forgotten, abused and ordinary violins, What Could Be Saved transports you into the world of the violin, compelling you to witness its most tragic, comic and thoroughly human dramas. Blending viewpoints and storytelling techniques, including magical and psychological realism, moving from novella to story and back again, there is a sustained musicality that thrums through these beautiful, almost dream-like tales. Spatz's language is precise and powerful, his fiction elegantly wrought. A book that echoes long after its music ends.

An elaborate tale of family and the paths people take to understanding. Seattle Times[This] mix of well-researched history and contemporary fiction makes for a fine, sad read. Minneapolis Star TribuneHauntingly honest and emotionally resonant. Publishers Weekly (starred review)Gregory Spatzs prose is as clean and sparkling as a new fall of snow. JANET FITCH, author of White Oleander and Paint it BlackAt its heart Inukshuk is about family. But Spatz has transfigured this beautifully told, wise story with history and myth, poetry and magic into something rarer, stranger and altogether amazing. A book that points unerringly true north. KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of The Jane Austen Book Club and Wits EndJohn Franklin has moved his fifteen-year-old son to the remote northern Canadian town of Houndstitch to make a new life together after his wife, Thomas mother, left them. Mourning her disappearance, John, a high school English teacher, writes poetry and escapes into an affair, while Thomas withdraws into a fantasy recreation of the infamous Victorian-era arctic expedition led by British explorer Sir John Franklin. With teenage bravado, Thomas gives himself scurvy so that he can sympathize with the characters in the film of his mindand is almost lost himself.While told over the course of only a few days, this gripping tale slips through time, powerfully evoking a modern family in distress and the legendary "e;Franklin's Lost Expedition"e; crews descent into despair, madness, and cannibalism aboard the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror on the Arctic tundra.Gregory Spatz is the author of the novels Inukshuk, Fiddlers Dream, and No One But Us, and the short fiction collections Wonderful Tricks and Half as Happy. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and recipient of a Washington State Book Award, he teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane and plays the fiddle and tours with Mighty Squirrel and the internationally acclaimed bluegrass band John Reischman and The Jaybirds.