Laugh-out-loud funny and utterly serious, exploring life’s profundity through its details.
Crossing time, states, class, and religions, McGraw’s stories are on the edge, causing you to wince even as you laugh. And McGraw will draw you to a deep need to read some sentences aloud―a sweet voice, a shrewd insight, some uneasy charm.
Available at:
Laugh-out-loud funny and utterly serious, exploring life’s profundity through its details.
Crossing time, states, class, and religions, McGraw’s stories are on the edge, causing you to wince even as you laugh. And McGraw will draw you to a deep need to read some sentences aloud―a sweet voice, a shrewd insight, some uneasy charm.
Available at:
Stories
Featuring 53 stories about characters including:
- An impulsive first-time murderer
- A depressed pet sitter
- An assistant of Patsy Cline
- Ava Gardner & Frank Sinatra
- A bitter wedding-dress saleswoman
- A new college freshman
- An aged rock-and-roller
- An anxiety-riddled new mother
- A high-school girl in West Side Story
- A professional hand model
- A young hot-dog shop manager
Read
Take a story for as spin. Read America, one of the 53 stories in Joy.
First, though, I have to learn the steps to “America.” It’s an all-girl number, which I thought would make the dancing easy, but Mr. Bixby says we’re supposed to dance in Spanish, and none of us knows how to do that. At first he told us to wiggle, but now he’s telling us to ripple. “You can’t just jiggle your skirt and think you’re going to look Puerto Rican,” he says, holding his hands up as if he were shaking out a towel. In case anybody has missed it, he’s gay. “Your whole body is alive and flashing. The Jets girls are wound tight, but you are exploding!”
Excerpts
Here are the openings of two stories from the collection. Just enough, I hope, to get you interested. Enjoy! And let me know what you think.
Ava Gardner goes home
Law & Order
Reviews
