By Light We Knew Our Names - by Anne Valente (Paperback)

Number of Pages: 224
Genre: Fiction + Literature Genres
Sub-Genre: Short Stories (single author)
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Age Range: Adult
Author: Anne Valente
Language: English

About the Book

Thirteen stories exploring the thin borders between wonder and loss and magic and grief

Book Synopsis

From ghosts to pink dolphins to a fight club of young women who practice beneath the Alaskan aurora borealis, By Light We Knew Our Names examines the beauty and heartbreak of the world we live in. Across thirteen stories, this collection explores the thin border between magic and grief.

Review Quotes

In these wonderful stories, Anne Valente shows again and again her talent for extracting the obsessions and anxieties and wonder of childhood, then extrapolating them across the whole of a life: Here feelings manifest as objects, relationships exist as gifts physically given, and every page contains a thrilling combination of sadness and joy, humor and loss, science and mystery and magic. By Light We Knew Our Names is a striking debut, reminiscent of Aimee Bender and Lorrie Moore, but with a bright promise all its own. --Matt Bell, author of In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods

In general, issues trump characterization in these stories; well-crafted and perhaps overly solemn, they are the kind of fare that used to appear in the 'better' women's magazines. Valente's territory may be small, but she covers it with insight and depth. -- Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Anne Valente's fiction appears in Hayden's Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, The Journal and Redivider, among others, and her essays appear in The Washington Post and The Believer. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook, An Elegy for Mathematics (Origami Zoo Press, 2013). Winner of Copper Nickel's 2012 Fiction Prize, her work was listed as notable in Best American Non-Required Reading 2011. Originally from St. Louis, she currently lives in the Midwest.