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BookBrowse Reviews A Perfect Stranger by Roxana Robinson

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A Perfect Stranger by Roxana Robinson

A Perfect Stranger

And other stories

by Roxana Robinson
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  • First Published:
  • Apr 1, 2005, 256 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2006, 256 pages
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Short stories that tick away with the precision of perfectly wrought timepieces

From the book jacket: In Roxana Robinson's lucid and elegant prose, her characters' inner worlds open up to us, revealing private emotional cores that are familiar in their needs, their secrets, and their longings. These people tell us the truth – not only about themselves, their relationships, and their lives, but about ourselves as well.

A Perfect Stranger powerfully and affectingly examines the complex, intricate network of experiences that binds us to one another. These stories are tender, raw, lovely, and fine–and they reaffirm Roxana Robinson's place at the forefront of modern literature.

Comment: Short stories are often overlooked in favor of novels, but why when they're just the thing for so many occasions? Short stories are just the right length for the bath, subway ride or just those few minutes of downtime that we all need occasionally; they also make great "beach reads" because it's easy to close the book every few dozen pages and actually notice you're on the beach!

Roxanna Robinson's short stories come highly recommended by a number of reviewers, including Joyce Carol Oates who describes them as 'beautifully rendered prose [that] captures moments of domestic drama - sometimes painful, sometimes ecstatic, always heartrending and illuminating'; and Kirkus Reviews who concludes that they are 'stories that tick away with the precision of perfectly wrought timepieces'.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2005, and has been updated for the March 2006 edition. Click here to go to this issue.

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Read-Alikes

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If you liked A Perfect Stranger, try these:

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    The Little Black Book of Stories

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    These unforgettable stories are by turns haunting, funny, sparkling, and scary. Byatt’s Little Black Book adds a deliciously dark note to her skill in mixing folk and fairy tales with everyday life.

  • Flights of Love jacket

    Flights of Love

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    A collection of stories that weave themselves around the idea of love---love to seek and love to flee; love as desire, as guilt, as confusion or self-betrayal; love as habit, as affair, and as life-changing rebellion.


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