New Releases by Jayne Anne Phillips

A luminous memoir in essays from the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, who reflects on her origins and the mysteries of memory. “Understand: born and raised in West Virginia, you can never truly leave. Those who stay, and those who don’t, stand in the middle of the story, wherever they go.” Jayne Anne Phillips grew up in the small town of Buckhannon, West Virginia. The distinctly American landscape of Appalachia—dense with forests and small churches, rich in history and misunderstandings—has been the great setting for her fiction, even as she and her boundless imagination have traveled to other times and places. In these pieces, and in her inimitable first-person voice, at once intimate and wide-ranging, Phillips brings us into her childhood and family, most movingly her mother. She recreates the place she calls home, its foundational truths and the densely woven ties between the women of the town. She traces her journey across the country in search of love and work and belonging—her discovery of writing and reading as tools for both survival and revelation—and offers insights into the fellow writers and touchstones that moved and influenced her. From the local beauty salon to the legendary Hatfield–McCoy feud, from Jean Shrimpton and Barbara Stanwyck to Stephen Crane and Breece D''J Pancake, Phillips ponders her relationship with inspiration, spirituality, culture, and the troubled annals of the last American centuries. Tender, inviting, sparkling with wisdom and open-heartedness, Small Town Girls is Jayne Anne Phillips’s most personal, most accessible book yet, a portrait of an artist as well as a love letter to the place and the people who have shaped her perceptions and her writing.

1874, au lendemain de la guerre de Sécession. Sur les routes de Virginie-Occidentale se croisent civils et soldats, renégats et vagabonds, affranchis et fugitifs. ConaLee, 12 ans, l’adulte de sa famille depuis aussi longtemps qu’elle s’en souvienne, entreprend un voyage avec sa mère, qui n’a pas prononcé un mot depuis des mois, et l’homme qu’on lui a dit d’appeler « papa ». Ce vétéran sudiste, qui s’est imposé dans leur monde, les dépose à l’entrée de l’asile d’aliénés de Trans-Allegheny. Là, loin de leurs proches, se faisant passer pour une dame et sa bonne, mère et fille empruntent le long chemin de la guérison. Une fois de plus, Jayne Anne Phillips tisse un récit envoûtant où la mémoire collective, les secrets familiaux et les fracas de l’Histoire se conjuguent. Dans une prose d’une beauté âpre, elle s’attache à dépeindre avec empathie les victimes, les blessés dans leur chair et leur âme. Et fait revivre une galerie de personnages mémorables: Dearbhla, la guérisseuse irlandaise qui sait lire dans les pierres, O’Shea, le veilleur de nuit amnésique ou encore Mrs Hexum, la cuisinière au grand coeur. Autant de sentinelles qui tentent à leur échelle de protéger un monde qui se délite et de réparer les vivants.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War—and a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds "A tour de force." —Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives. The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution. Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Twenty-three years old, alone, broke, and without options, a young woman returns to her mother’s home. There, while the television drones and her mother laments the aging of Walter Cronkite, Hubert Humphrey, and her own body, the young woman has endless hours to relive her life with her high school boyfriend. When a former lover and Vietnam medic Daniel comes to visit her, it will be the first time a man has entered the home in a very long time. Jayne Anne Phillips captures the quiet, searing awkwardness between a mother and daughter, scarred by their past relationships, memories of lost intimacy, and conversations they could never share. A classic of the genre, “Home” and the other stories comprising Black Tickets were pronounced “unlike any in our literature...a crooked beauty” by Raymond Carver. An ebook short.

Traduit de l''anglais (États-Unis) par Marc Amfreville. En 1931, à Park Ridge (Illinois), un certain Cornelius O. Pierson assassina une jeune veuve, Asta Eicher, et ses trois enfants. En enquêtant sur leur disparition, la police découvrit que Pierson n''était autre que Harry Powers, un serial killer qui recrutait ses victimes par le biais d''annonces matrimoniales. Cette affaire qui bouleversa l''Amérique inspira à Charles Laughton son admirable film, La Nuit du chasseur. Tous les vivants est le " roman vrai " de cette histoire. Jayne Anne Phillips reconstitue avec minutie le déroulement de la tragédie, la traque du meurtrier et son arrestation. Mais c''est d''abord son extraordinaire imagination romanesque qui frappe à la lecture de ce livre. La voix de la petite Annabel, assassinée par Powers, se mêle à celle des vivants, qu''ils soient réels ou inventés de toutes pièces, comme Emily Thornhill, la journaliste qui mène les investigations. Porté par un souffle puissant, Tous les vivants explore un territoire où se mêlent le réel et le surnaturel, l''innocence et la perversité, la beauté et l''horreur. C''est aussi une radiographie de l''Amérique profonde des années 30, de ses peurs et de ses espoirs, au lendemain de la " Grande Dépression " qui l''a dévastée.

Året är 1931. Trebarnsmodern Asta Eicher är ensam och i penganöd efter att hennes make plötsligt gått bort. Via en kontaktannons börjar hon brevväxla med en charmig man vid namn Cornelius Pierson. Han uppvaktar henne och lovar till slut att gifta sig med henne, att sörja för henne och barnen. Asta bestämmer sig för att åka till honom i det lilla samhället Quiet Dell. Barnen ska komma efter. Några veckor senare hittas hela familjen Eicher död, mördad och nedgrävd under Piersons garage. Medan samhället skuldbelägger Asta för hennes bristande omdöme, blir den unga journalisten Emily djupt engagerad i familjens öde, särskilt den yngsta dottern Annabels – en flicka med brådmogen fantasi och sinne för det magiska. Hon bevakar rättegången och beslutar sig för att själv utreda vad som hänt. Mördaren, vars riktiga namn är Harry Powers, är en gåta. Vad driver honom och hur har han lyckats byta identitet så många gånger? Historien om Quiet Dell är en skönlitterär skildring av ett fall som på sin tid var mycket uppmärksammat. Det är ett laddat drama, där Phillips ger liv åt de människor som berördes och drabbades.

In 1931, Emily Thornhill, one of the few women in the Chicago press, covers the murders of Asta Eicher and her three children and, obsessed with finding out what happened to this beautiful family, allies herself with the man funding the investigation.

Kate - whose care for her terminally ill mother coincides with the birth of her first child in the early months of a young marriage - must, in a single year, come to terms with radiant beginnings and profound loss. Kate''s everyday world is enveloped by the gradual vanishing of her mother. And as the woman who has been her best friend and mentor disappears, we see Kate deal with timeless, perhaps unanswerable, questions of love and death.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch: the reputation-making debut short story collection that paved the way for a new generation of writers. • “Brilliant … Phillips is a virtuoso.” —The Chicago Tribune Jayne Anne Phillips''s reputation-making debut collection paved the way for a new generation of writers. Raved about by reviewers and embraced by the likes of Raymond Carver, Frank Conroy, Annie Dillard, and Nadine Gordimer, Black Tickets now stands as a classic. With an uncanny ability to depict the lives of men and women who rarely register in our literature, Phillips writes stories that lay bare their suffering and joy. Here are the abused and the abandoned, the violent and the passive, the impoverished and the disenfranchised who populate the small towns and rural byways of the country. A patron of the arts reserves his fondest feeling for the one man who wants it least. A stripper, the daughter of a witch, escapes from poverty into another kind of violence. A young girl during the Depression is caught between the love of her crazy father and the no less powerful love of her sorrowful mother. These are great American stories that have earned a privileged place in our literature.

Called “an enduring literary achievement . . . astonishing” by The New York Times, this highly acclaimed debut novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch introduces the Hampsons, an ordinary, small-town American family profoundly affected by the extraordinary events of history—from the Depression to the Vietnam War. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Here is a stunning chronicle that is revealed in the thoughts, dreams, and memories of each member of the Hampson family. Mitch struggles to earn a living as Jeans becomes the main breadwinner, working to complete college and raise the family. While the couple fight to keep their marriage intact, their daughter Danner and son Billy forge a sibling bond of uncommon strength. When Billy goes off to Vietnam, Danner becomes the sole bond linking her family, whose dissolution mirrors the fractured state of America in the 1960s. Deeply felt and vividly imagined, this lyrical novel is "among the wisest of a generation to grapple with a war that maimed us all" (The Village Voice), by a master of contemporary fiction.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch: a short story collection that presents a tour de force of voices, offering elegantly rendered views into the lives of characters torn between the liberation of detachment and the desire to connect. "A brilliant writer, utterly original and with an astonishing range." —Ian McEwan, New York Times bestselling author of Atonement and Lessons Three stories are collected in this edition for the first time: in "Alma," and adolescent daughter is made the confidante of her lonely mother; "Counting" traces the history of a dommed love affair; and "Callie" evokes memories of the haunting death of a child in 1920''s West Virginia. Along with the original seven stories from Fast Lanes—each told in extraordinary first person narratives that have been hailed by critics as virtuoso performances—these incandescent portraits offer windows into the lives of an entire generation of Americans, demonstrating again and again why Jayne Anne Phillips remains one of our most powerful writers.

Een 17-jarig meisje en haar halfbroer die niet kan lopen en praten ontdekken tijdens een overstroming geheimen uit hun verleden.

Lark and Termite is a rich, wonderfully alive novel about seventeen year old Lark and her brother, Termite, living in West Virginia in the 1950s. Their mother, Lola, is absent, while their aunt, Nonie, raises them as her own, and Termite¿s father, Corporal Robert Leavitt, is caught up in the early days of the Korean War. Award-winning author Jayne Anne Phillips intertwines family secrets, dreams, and ghosts in a story about the love that unites us all.

Située dans les années 1950, en Virginie-Occidentale et en Corée, Lark et Termite est une histoire du pouvoir de la perte et de l''amour, des mondes parallèles, des répercussions de la guerre, des secrets de famille, des rêves, des fantômes, des liens invisibles, presque magiques, qui nous unissent et nous renforcent. Quatre voix alternent pour dévoiler, au gré de leurs émotions, les secrets de cette histoire familiale. Au centre du récit: Lark, une adolescente radieuse : son jeune frère handicapé, Termite. à la sensibilité hors du commun; et leur tante Nonie, qui les élève avec dévouement. En écho, nous parvient la voix du caporal Leavitt, le père de Termite, piégé dans le chaos des premiers mois de combat de la guerre de Corée. Au fil de leurs pensées surgissent et s''évaporent les mystères familiaux, marqués par l''amour de Lola, la mère des deux enfants, pour le soldat Leavitt.

This classic biography, first published in June 1946, was reissued to mark the 450th anniversary of the death of St Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. Fr Phillips presents Ignatius life in vivid terms that demonstrate its heroism and variety. This is the story of the striking journey Ignatius made in exchanging the pursuit of worldly pleasure and power for spiritual combat, thus becoming one of the most intriguing true contemplatives in action. The booklet has been updated by Fr Anthony Symondson SJ who has also provided a short introduction.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch comes a novel set in a West Virginia forest in 1963, where a group of children at summer camp enter a foreboding Eden and experience an unexpected rite of passage. “A rich, vivid novel of moral and psychological complexity destined to stand alongside works by Faulkner and other masters of Southern literature.” —Vanity Fair Shelter is an astonishing portrayal of an American loss of innocence as witnessed by a mysterious drifter named Parson, two young sisters, Lenny and Alma, and a feral boy called Buddy. Together they come to understand bravery and the importance of compassion. Phillips unearths a dangerous beauty in this primeval terrain and in the hearts of her characters. Lies, secrets, erotic initiations, and the bonds of love between friends, families, and generations are transformed in a leafy wilderness undiminished by societal rules and dilemmas. Cast in Phillips’ stunning prose, with an unpredictable cast of characters and a shadowy, suspenseful narrative, Shelter is a an enduring achievement from one of the finest writers of our time.

En "Línea materna", una novela brillante e inquietante, JayneAnne Phillips relata la historia de Kate, quien deberá ocuparse al mismo tiempo de la enfermedad terminal de su madre y del cuidado del primer hijo nacido de su aún reciente matrimonio. En el transcurso de un año, Kate se enfrenta pues a grandes esperanzas y profundas pérdidas, que la llevarán a revisar su infancia y adolescencia para intentar ver el futuro con ilusión.

Kate est enceinte et sa mère va mourir. Au fil de ses pages, de réminiscences en situations quotidiennes, le roman nous fait suivre cette aventure humaine, à la fois exceptionnelle et malheureusement banale, de confrontation simultanée à la vie et à la mort. Une année, rythmée par les saisons, au cours de laquelle le bébé naît puis grandit, découvre son corps et le langage, fait ses premiers pas, tandis que Katherine, la mère de l''héroïne, voit son indépendance physique et sa belle lucidité graduellement s''amenuiser jusqu''au dénouement inéluctable. Un livre attachant, frémissant de sensibilité intériorisée, et pourtant jamais grandiloquent, jamais ouvertement sentimental. Un tel sujet pourrait faire craindre - et ce d''autant plus qu''on sent à chaque page le fort contenu autobiographique - un roman de l''épanchement. Il n''en est rien. C''est au contraire un beau texte " retenu ", naturellement impudique quand le souci de réalité l''exige, mais toujours digne, avec une qualité d''humour et parfois même de légèreté qui apparaît comme la vraie marque du courage. Un roman de la compassion, au sens le plus fort.