Guests of Story! were in for a treat as two Maine writers shared with us the pleasures that flow from their short stories.
While each story stands alone, together each of these books forms a story-cycle revealing new truths and enhancing our understanding of people and place. The form of the short-story cycle dates back to the early 19th century and was James Joyce’s vehicle for Dubliners and William Faulkner’s for Go Down, Moses. On March 5, Morgan Talty read from his Night of the Living Rez about the inhabitants of the Penobscot Indian reservation and Laura Bonazzoli shared her Consecration Pond stories about people who live around a pond in Maine.
About Talty’s stories in Night of the Living Rez, the New York Times Book Review wrote:
“In a brash, irreverent story collection… Talty illuminates life and death on the Penobscot Indian Nation reservation… it forms something like a circle, one that snakes through the past but always ends up in the present, in the madness and joy of today… these stories illuminate life and death on the Penobscot Indian Nation reservation, where Talty was raised, in all its heaving, visceral glory.”
Of Consecration Pond, publisher Toad Hall Editions said:
“The eleven linked short stories in Laura Bonazzoli’s collection take place in and around the same pond in rural Maine. Together, these stories offer a meditation on the nature of wisdom, the risks and gifts of allowing ourselves to be seen, and the challenge of creating meaning in the wake of loss.”