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Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories cover

Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories

Joan Silber

0

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4

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Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories

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Ideas of Heaven won the National Book Award and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Intense in subject yet restrained in tone, these stories are about longings—often held for years—and the ways in which sex and religion can become parallel forms of dedication and comfort. Though the stories stand alone, a minor element in one becomes major in the next. In "My Shape", a woman is taunted by her dance coach, who later suffers his own heartache. A Venetian poet of the 1500s, another storyteller, is introduced to a modern traveler reading Rilke. His story precedes a mesmerizing narrative of missionaries in China. In the final story, Giles, born to a priesthood family, leans toward Buddhism after a grievous loss, and in time falls in love with the dancer of the first story. So deft and subtle is Joan Silber with these various perspectives that we come full circle surprised and enchanted by her myriad worlds.

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Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Year
2005
ISBN-13
9780393070729
Genre
Fiction
Topics
Longing and desireReligion and spiritualityInterconnected lives across time

Awards

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