Overview

A formerly close friend passes on the street without looking up, and a college friend arrives at a dorm room and refuses to leave. A working-class schoolboy looks for friends in his new neighborhood, and a middle-class teen learns something else during his piano lesson. A couple on the rocks take a vacation in a sunny clime, and another couple, older and wiser, head out for a weekend in New England. A medical student gets close to a girl with cystic fibrosis, and a family doctor loses his equilibrium when he treats an attractive but abused young woman. Such are the stories Michael Glenn recounts in this volume, selected from the many he wrote between from 1958 and 2015, beginning in college and continuing through medical school and his career as a physician and psychiatrist, factory worker and community activist. His characters are prickly and difficult, caring and kind, old and young. They struggle to find meaning in the debris found on a street, a dangerous encounter on a subway train, and an idealized relationship that spans decades. With grit and honesty, realistic descriptions, and a nuanced awareness of emotional states, Glenn writes scenes that bear witness to the changing world of the past half-century. The characters learn from their lived experiences, and the readers are the beneficiaries.

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9781953253026

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Reviews

"Beautifully crafted and consistently thought-provoking, these stories quickly draw us into urgent moments in ordinary-and some not so ordinary-people's lives. Sometimes bleak, sometimes funny, Glenn writes with great insight into the hidden workings of the human mind. -Elizabeth Ammons, PhD., Harriet H. Fay Professor of Literature Emerita, Tufts University Brilliant, beautiful, and tender, the book blossoms into a wonder-full collection of stories about a wide variety of people all struggling to find some measure of love, peace, and safety. Glenn captures their journeys with deep insight and profound empathy. This treasure of a book is not to be missed. -David Treadway, PhD., nationally known therapist, and author of Dead Reckoning and Treating Couples Well: A Practical Guide To Collaborative Couple Therapy. Shines in transparent style and solid images. In Selected Stories, life shambles out. It's a burgeoning sculpture of transience. Still, its armature-what centers life itself--holds firm. Here, as in medieval times, love moves the sun and all the other stars. -A. McA. (Mac) Miller, Ph.D, Emeritus Professor of Literature at New College, Florida, widely published poet, Editor of New CollAge Magazine for thirty years, author of the poetry collection ""Overdrive"" (2021). I first met Michael Glenn sixty years ago. When we reconnected, I was glad to see that he had continued writing fiction, collecting them here in a book with work spanning six decades. The classic for me is ""The Room,"" which seems to me more deeply felt and stylistically distinctive. -Richard Kostelanetz, independent artist and writer, author of The End of Intelligent Writing: Literary Politics in America (1974, 2023) In these astute short stories, Michael Glenn combines his medical background with a love of the written word to cleverly delve into the mystery and puzzle of human motive, human emotion. A sort of Ministry of Fear tone, emotionally flat and ominous at the same time. - John J. Ronan, poet, playwright, movie producer, and journalist, National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, former Poet Laureate of Gloucester, Professor Emeritus at North Shore Community College, Danvers, MA. Books include Marrowbone Lane and Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown. An extraordinary collection of sharply observed tales--sometimes frightening, often deeply moving, and always with an unsparing eye for hard truths. These stories will burrow under your skin and resonate in your heart, long after you've turned the final page. -Diane (Didi) Stewart, Associate Professor (Voice Department), Berklee College of Music, composer, writer, performer, two-time winner of the Boston Music Award for best female vocalist, known for her bands, Didi Stewart and the Amplifiers, and Girls' Night Out. With Michael Glenn's ""Selected Stories,"" we are in the hands of a master. Readers accustomed to minimalist prose will be rewarded by the opposite: a chance to luxuriate in descriptions lengthy and precise that will make you wonder how it was you left that rich palette for a slimmer one. -Kendall Dudley, writer, artist, teacher, career/retirement designer at kendalldudley.com"

Author Information

Michael Glenn is a retired physician and political activist. His stories have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Antioch Review, and the anthology Young American Writers.

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