Peter Orner is the author of three widely praised books, Esther Stories and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, and Love and Shame and Love. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and The Best American Short Stories, and has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Orner is now a faculty member at San Francisco State University.
Praise for Last Car over the Sagamore Bridge "A séance of a
book--moody, tragic, sacred by turns."--Stuart Dybek, author of The
Coast of Chicago
"Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge is an incredible achievement.
Peter Orner has a daring imagination and a voice all writers yearn
for; he has joined the masters of the short story form."-Chris
Abani
"A kind of dark kaleidoscope of American moments, when both the
powerful and powerless wonder, why can't our dreams be content with
the terrible facts?"-Pamela Masin, "Book of the Week," O, The Oprah
Magazine
"A magnificent and moving mosaic."--San Francisco Chronicle
"No, we won't last. But the stories we tell ourselves sustain us in
ways we never would have suspected. Mere anecdote rarely achieves
profundity, yet it does here."-Ann Beattie, Electric Literature (on
"At the Fairmont")
"Once again Peter Orner has produced a masterful and compelling
collection of short stories....In a one-page story, a blind, old
poet...recites, 'Why can't our dreams be content with the terrible
facts?' This question serves as a theme for the entire
collection."-Suri Boiangiu, Jewish Book Council Reviews
"One of our best and most adventurous writers....By casting a wide
net and depicting so many and various souls, he urges us toward
recognition of the transcendent--the beauty of it all, the one big
soul."--Daniel Woodrell, author of The Maid's Version
"Orner packs memorable characters into an exceptionally small
space....Throughout the stories, he shows himself to be a master of
the pithy phrase."-Kirkus Reviews
"Orner packs remarkable pathos into his condensed
narratives."--Wall Street Journal
"Orner returns to the short form he handled so well in Esther
Stories, a Rome Prize winner."-Library Journal
"Orner's crystalline sentences and his ability to pay close and
sustained attention to small moments transform the ordinary
elements of each story into an even more astonishing whole....Orner
can nail interior monologue in a way that recalls Grace
Paley...Every story in Last Car over the Sagamore Bridge is
excellent, incisive, moving."-Lauren Groff, New York Times Book
Review
"Orner's stories exult and serve remembering and the heartbreak
that so often attends it."-Kate Petersen, Rain Taxi
"Orner's...stories, despite their length, are big, universal, with
Orner working it and working it, until he hits the gold vein of the
unknown....Themes knit the stories together: family, death,
politics, death, memory, and the significance of story and
storytelling itself....The superglue of this collection is
language. The compression of it-the pressure to say a lot with a
little."-Nina Schuyler, The Rumpus
"Peter Orner is mining a deep vein of human experience....What he
comes up with is a true work of art that will make you think, 'Oh,
this is how it's done.'"--Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the
Only Way I Want It
"Radiant....There's a curiosity in Orner's work, this need to seek
out stories and lives well beyond his own sphere, and there's a
necessary humility as he does this seeking."-Peter Mountford, Tin
House
"Reaffirms Peter Orner's storytelling mastery."--Chicago Tribune
Printers Row
"The opening sentences of Peter Orner's lapidary stories are
irresistible invitations to read further....These very short
tales...range without straining over a great expanse of time and
experience....With this new publication and with the recent reissue
of Mr. Orner's 2001 collection, Esther Stories, this is an ideal
moment to appreciate a master of his form."-John Williams, New York
Times
"The stories of Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge confirm what I've
long suspected: Peter Orner is one of the most accomplished writers
of our generation. Yes, he is a master craftsman; every word is
nailed down, and there isn't a sentence, or even a sound, out of
place. But he's something else besides-a savant of the soul. Think
Grace Paley, Michael Ondaatje, Paul Bowles, then add Bruce
Springsteen's rhythm and overwhelming loyalty to humanity, and you
get close to Orner's fierce, gorgeously poetic, heartbreaking
prose."-Alexandra Fuller, author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs
Tonight
"You wouldn't think someone could haunt you with a life that spans
just a few lines, but Peter Orner can. He can tell you an entire
ghost story, and you won't stop believing it until the next welcome
specter chases it away." -Mia Lipman, San Francisco Journal of
Books
"Imagine Brief Interveiws with Hideous Men written by Alice Munro."
- Tom Bissell, Harper's Magazine
"Orner fires jewel-toned shards of fiction into a stunning whole."
- Publishers Weekly
"Orner is an undisputed master of the short short story." -
Booklist
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