I Cannot Tell a Lie, Exactly: And Other StoriesRandom House, 2001 - 220 pages It is the stuff of fiction: A collection of stories, never made public, is lost in a drawer for thirty years until, miraculously, the stories are discovered and published. It is also the true story of the book you are holding in your hands. Mary Ladd Gavell died in 1967 at the age of forty-seven, having published nothing in her lifetime. She was the managing editor of "Psychiatry "magazine in Washington, D.C., and after her death, her colleagues ran her story "The Rotifer" in the magazine as a tribute. The story was, somehow, plucked from that nonliterary journal and selected for The Best American Short Stories 1967. And again, thirty-three years later, "The Rotifer" emerged from near obscurity when John Updike selected it for The Best American Short Stories of the Century. In his Introduction to that collection, Updike called Gavell's story a "gem" and said that her writing was "feminism in literary action." "The Rotifer" has remained, until now, Gavell's only published work. The sixteen stories collected here include the anthologized classic "The Rotifer," in which a young woman learns the extent to which a bit of innocent interference, or the refusal to interfere, can change the course of lives. "The Swing" depicts a mother's strange reconnection to her adult son's childhood as she is summoned outside, night after night, by the creak of his old swing. "Baucis" introduces a woman longing for widowhood who is cheated of the respite she craves and whose last words are tragically misunderstood by her family. The title story, based on the last-minute announcement by Gavell's own son that he was in a school play, is infused with the gentle humor and vivid insights that make allof Mary Ladd Gavell's stories timeless and utterly beguiling. With the publication of I Cannot Tell a Lie, Exactly, Mary Ladd Gavell takes her rightful place among the best writers of her, and our, time. |
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Page 46
... cotton season was on , and the sky was hot and blue . Orange or gray or red wag- ons of bright white cotton pulled slowly down the roads past the Holmeses ' house in a great procession . The gins in the little town a mile or so away ...
... cotton season was on , and the sky was hot and blue . Orange or gray or red wag- ons of bright white cotton pulled slowly down the roads past the Holmeses ' house in a great procession . The gins in the little town a mile or so away ...
Page 97
... cotton sack and her lunch and Oliver Twist in the row next to the one she'd picked the day before . She skipped down the row , careful not to leave it for fear she'd ... cotton bolls almost buried in the leaves . The The Cotton Field / 97.
... cotton sack and her lunch and Oliver Twist in the row next to the one she'd picked the day before . She skipped down the row , careful not to leave it for fear she'd ... cotton bolls almost buried in the leaves . The The Cotton Field / 97.
Page 99
... cotton in a day as Esther Robinson . She did not like Esther Robinson . When school started in September Esther would say carelessly , but loud enough for every- one to hear , that ... cotton , and snatched furiously at The Cotton Field / 99.
... cotton in a day as Esther Robinson . She did not like Esther Robinson . When school started in September Esther would say carelessly , but loud enough for every- one to hear , that ... cotton , and snatched furiously at The Cotton Field / 99.
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Altas Anna arms asked Aunt Alice baby Bauer Benton Bert Thomas Big Boys Birdie Corpus Christi cotton course Cromwell Cub Scout darned dear Doleman door Ewing eyes face farm father feel felt Ferguson front fruit knives Gavell George Washington girl Grace Paley grandmother guess Hahvahd hair hand head Holmes Holmeses hooked rugs Jane Jim Holmes Jimmie John Julia Julius kitchen knew lady laughed Leah little boy live Lois looked Loueen Lutheran Mama Margaret Mark Twain married Mathilda Mercer metazoa mind Miss Chips mother never nice night Oliver Twist Peterson pick plaster pneumonia pretty road Robert Josiah Roger rotifer school bus seemed short stories shouted smile sometimes sure swing talk tell Texas thin thing thought tired told turned Uncle Albert voice woman young