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Summary and Reviews of My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead by Jeffrey Eugenides

My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead by Jeffrey Eugenides

My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead

Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro

by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 8, 2008, 608 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2009, 600 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

"Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."— Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead.

"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name ... .

It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."— Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead.

All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

With his artful curating, Eugenides has conquered one of the biggest problems of the short story collection. Reading anthologies can often be a dust-collecting, bedside-lingering process. Usually grouped by time period, nationality, publication, or award, they often serve primarily as a reference, introduction, or catalog, and editors are careful to make their personalities invisible. This makes them useful, reliable, and enjoyable for their parts, but unremarkable as a whole. My Mistress's Sparrow is exactly the opposite. It's not intended as a comprehensive survey of the greatest love stories of all time. Nor is it a treatise on love, as Eugenides warns in his excellent introduction. ("Please keep in mind: my subject here isn't love. My subject is the love story.") Instead, these are the selections of a reader; an impassioned, expert, committed, and discriminating reader; one who remembers that the best kind of reading comes from picking favorites...continued

Full Review (627 words)

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(Reviewed by Lucia Silva).

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Beyond the Book



All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Remember a little book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, back in ...

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Read-Alikes

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