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We Will Tell You Otherwise by Beth Mayer

July 25, 2019 by

Source: Caitlin Hamilton Marketing
Paperback, 140 pgs.
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We Will Tell You Otherwise by Beth Mayer, winner of the Hudson Prize, is a collection of short stories with quirky characters. Readers will be exposed to the unexpected, as the dead teach us that there is not a moment to waste and the mentally ill provide us with greater clarity than we expect about our lives.

Characters in these stories are frustrated and lost, but they find directions they never expected. With sly irony, Mayer has crafted a set of stories that will open readers’ minds to new points of view, forcing us to examine our own lives and how we perceive others, especially those living just outside the mainstream. Many of these characters are on the verge of irrevocable change in their lives, and there are moments that happen that can change it all.

While of the stories in We Will Tell You Otherwise are vastly different, at their heart, Beth Mayer takes her readers on a journey to explore human fragility and faults, while not losing their sense of hope. These characters have a lot to tell readers.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Beth Mayer’s fiction has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Sun Magazine, and The Midway Review. Her stories have been anthologized in New Stories from the Midwest (Ohio University/Swallow Press) and American Fiction (New Rivers Press), and have been recognized by Best American Mystery Stories among “Other Distinguished Stories.” Beth’s collection was a finalist for the 2016 Orison Book Prize and the 2015 Many Voices Project. The Missouri Review’s 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in fiction named her a finalist and her work in Jet Fuel Review has been nominated for the 2017 Best of the Net. Beth holds an MFA from Hamline University, was a Loft Mentor Series Winner in Fiction for 2015-16, and coordinates the Creative Writing Certificate at Century College. She lives in Minneapolis/St. Paul with her family and impossibly loyal dog.

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2019, reviews, short stories Tagged With: , , ,

Mailbox Monday #530

May 6, 2019 by

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has it’s own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Leslie, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s what I received:

We Will Tell You Otherwise by Beth Mayer for review in July.

  • What does Beth Mayer’s intimate collection of short stories want to tell us? That the dead have much to teach the living, that madness can point the way to clarity, that the burn of departing never cools, that inside abandonment can be redemption. Mayer’s prose rattles like bones, proving that no matter how far you live in the margins, you can’t escape the telling.

    –Desiree Cooper

  • Beth Mayer’s stories unflinchingly explore the tough and the tender sides of family life as well as offering us a window into the lives of those we often prefer not to notice when we pass them in our neighborhoods. I was moved by the deep emotional truths in We Will Tell You Otherwise, and the slyly ironic and often sardonic wit of these stories kept me smiling all the way through. What a lovely collection of stories this is!

    –David Haynes

  • The stories in Beth Mayer’s We Will Tell You Otherwise are indelible treasures, full of poignancy and pathos. Mayer is the best kind of writer—one who doles out her wisdom with humor, who mines the intricacies of love, friendship, and family effortlessly.

    –John Jodziov

What did you receive?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: ,