ISBN: 9780889242760    Publisher: The Dundurn Group Year of publishing: 1997     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 264        

Dreams vanish in most of the masterful stories that make up Norma Harrs' new collection. A young Irish girl falls in love with an older married professor and has her first date with heartache; a middle-aged woman attends her niece's wedding and drunkenly surveys the wreck of her own life and love affairs; a young woman admires her kind and, beautiful neighbour so much that she is almost drawn into a not so innocent profession...Adversity, sometimes disaster, befalls Norma Harrs' characters, but instead of destroying these people, it often miraculously enriches their existence, bringing them a sudden awareness of what had been wrong with their lives and inspiring them to make a fresh start. Ms Harrs seamlessly weaves together plot and evocative detail, wildly funny turns of events and inconsolable sadness; her stories' earthy eroticism, their startlingly vivid dialogue and, above all, their breathtakingly original rendering of suffering and joy will remain with the reader long after the final page.
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