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    Love Stories in this Town: Stories
    Love Stories in this Town: Stories
    Love Stories in this Town: Stories
    Audiobook4 hours

    Love Stories in this Town: Stories

    Written by Amanda Eyre Ward

    Narrated by Johanna Parker

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Praised by Bookpage as "America's best-kept literary secret," Amanda Eyre Ward delivers a debut short story collection imbued with humor, clear-eyed insight, and emotional richness. Here a small-town librarian considers the possibility of a new future. A recent New York widow braves the dating scene. And-in six linked stories spanning a decade of her life-Lola Wilkerson navigates lingering questions about who she wants to be when she grows up, elopement, and motherhood. "Luminous work from a gifted writer."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 21, 2011
    ISBN9781461847861
    Love Stories in this Town: Stories
    Author

    Amanda Eyre Ward

    Amanda Eyre Ward was born in New York City, and graduated from Williams College and the University of Montana. Her short stories have been published in various literary reviews and magazines. She is the author of the critically acclaimed and award-winning novel ‘Sleep Towards Heaven’ and ‘How to be Lost’, and was named by the New York Post as one of five Writers to Watch in 2003. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, geologist Tip Meckel.

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    Reviews for Love Stories in this Town

    3.5/5

    6 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Now i thought this would fill my love tank but she highlights the reality of relationships, how love is more than gush! Quite refreshing from just a young writer.
    • 2/5
      Amanda Eyre Ward is one of my favorite authors and I've read all three of her novels but this short story collection just didn't measure up. The stories were too short and just ended abruptly.......you wanted them to go on and tell the whole story!
    • 4/5
      First lines are the handshakes writers give their readers.As we slide into the story, we’ll always remember that first impression of the opening sentences’ firm, self-assured grip. If we don’t remember those first lines, it’s probably because the author gave us a clammy, limp-fingered greeting. In her debut story collection, Love Stories in This Town, novelist Amanda Eyre Ward has no problem with “gripping” first lines.Readers familiar with Ward’s previous works of fiction—the novels Sleep Toward Heaven, How to Be Lost and Forgive Me--already know she can plot herself out of a paper bag with ease. With a relaxed, witty writing style, she has a way of burrowing right to the heart of her characters—ordinary folks who find themselves caught in the turbulence of unexpected circumstances. The same holds true for Love Stories in This Town. The majority of the tales on these pages open like a racehorse bursting from the chute.I have always been a sucker for first sentences. I can distinctly remember specific moments in my life when the breath was sucked from my lungs by Raymond Carver (My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.—“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”) and Richard Ford (All of this that I am about to tell happened when I was only fifteen years old, in 1959, the year my parents were divorced, the year when my father killed a man and went to prison for it, the year I left home and school, told a lie about my age to fool the Army, and then did not come back. The year, in other words, when life changed for all of us and forever—ended, really, in a way none of us could ever have imagined in our most brilliant dreams of life.—“Optimists”).Ward, in my humble opinion, is their equal (at least in the First Lines Dept.). The dozen tales in Love Stories in This Town are sharp-focused family snapshots, catching husbands, wives, children, parents, lovers and ex-lovers in moments of confusion, hope, paranoia, delight, resentment and all the other ingredients of the human stew.A young couple still reeling from a miscarriage searches for a new home in a strange town. In another story, it’s the anticipation of a pregnancy that provides the suspense as a young woman working at a dot-com tries to sort out her feelings of motherhood. Lola, the character at the center of connected stories in the book’s second half, spends most of her life looking for her place in life. The pall of 9/11 hangs over several of the stories, as do the dark clouds of romance. Yes, I said “dark clouds.” Despite the breezy nature of Ward’s style, there’s an underlying effort to strip away the happy, shiny veneer of love, Hollywood-style. The title of the book, after all, is taken from a line of dialogue spoken by a cynical bartender: “There are no love stories in this town.”I could go on at length about the many charms of the book, but I’ll just use this space to pinpoint some of Ward’s excellent opening lines:They told us the baby was dead, and two days later we were on a plane to Texas. (“The Stars Are Bright in Texas”)A woman had drowned in the lake, but that did not make it any less picturesque. (“On Messalonskee Lake”)I had heard about the rib, of course, but did not expect it to be at the Smiths’ Christmas party. Yet there it was, on the mantel, sandwiched between a bowl of cinnamon-scented potpourri and a holly sprig. Merry Christmas! Here’s our daughter’s rib. (“The Way the Sky Changed”)The man Lola loved wasn’t marrying her, and she didn’t know what to wear to the wedding. (“Miss Montana’s Wedding Day”)Lola thought the baby shower would be canceled due to the beheading, but she was wrong. (“Motherhood and Terrorism”)And this, from my favorite story in the collection—“Butte as in Beautiful”—which, if memory serves me right, was the very first sentence of Ward’s I ever read, years ago when someone sent me a link to an on-line version of the story. The rest of the story, as with all of the other examples I cited above, more than fulfills that tantalizing handshake promise of the opening words. I dare anyone to stop reading after a sentence like this:It’s a crappy coincidence that on the day James asks for my hand in marriage, there is a masturbator loose in the library.
    • 4/5
      Love Stories in This Town is a smart and insightful look at women and the infinite number of ways they love. There are women loving their husbands, boyfriends, parents, and babies. There are women leaving for love or staying, being heartbroken or up-lifted, letting go of their dreams or clinging to them fiercely. The breadth of the stories is impressive and yet Amanda Eyre Ward somehow manages to get the feel in each one right. The stories are sharp, but also a little mysterious and beautiful, like love itself. I especially liked the series of stories about Lola, following her through life as she experiences different kinds of love and as her love for each person in her life matures and changes. I felt like each story offered up a subtle lesson and I often could relate to what the characters were going through. I didn't love this book quite as much as Amanda Ward Eyre's novels, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
    • 4/5
      These stories are not sweet, sappy, saccharine, predictable. Ward has delved in the psyches of different types of people and really brought out the cold hard truth of relationships. I enjoyed every story in this collection. Plenty of surprises throughout. I laughed. I could relate. Sometimes if I didn't, Ward finds a way to make me empathize with the characters. She really does an excellent job with Love Stories in This Town. I highly recommend it.