Synopses & Reviews
These eleven essays span continents, culture, and class. Fiction writer and essayist Charles D'Ambrosio inspects manufactured homes in Washington state; tours the rooma of Hell House, a Pentecostal "haunted house" in Texas; visits the dormitories and hallways of a Russian orphanage in Svirstroy; and explores the textual space of family letters, at once expansive and claustrophobic. In these spaces, or the people who inhabit them, he unearths a kind of optimism, however guarded. He introduces us to a defender of gray whales; the creator of Biosquat, a utopian experiment in Austin, Texas; and a younger version of himself, searching for "culture" in Seattle in 1974. He analyzes the nuances of Mary Kay Letourneau's trial and contemplates the persistence of rain and memory.
Review
"By turns witty, scathing, and elegiac, his exacting essays are exceptionally vital quests for meaning, and Seattle-based D'Ambrosio chooses his loaded subjects well, writing with nerve and rigor....D'Ambrosio's kinetic and evocative works reach to the very core of being and induce readers to question their every assumption." Booklist
Review
"These essays range from a piece on modular homes to a stark rumination on his own tragic family history. Each slips and slides between genres and registers, D'Ambrosio's lucid prose somehow very funny and terribly melancholy all at once." Joy Press, The Village Voice
Review
"What Joan Didion did for 70s era California in her book The White Album, Charles DAmbrosio does for the 90s era Northwest in his book Orphans. Dense gorgeous prose covering topics from Mary Kay LeTourneau to Russian Orphanages." Tin House magazine
Synopsis
Eleven essays from the prize-winning author of The Point and other stories. His first book in nine years.