FIC: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson

May: Fiction Pick

This is a collection of four long stories completed shortly before the author’s death, at 67, of liver cancer, in May 2017. His writing is  hard to describe, but brilliant. I wasn’t sure what the first story was about, actually, but I was riveted by the author’s voice. I think this is what is meant when people say someone is a writer’s writer.  He speaks in some novel, direct way, from the heart. “What I write about,” he says,” is the dilemma of living in a fallen world, and asking, why it is like this if there’s supposed to be a god.” I think it’s a great book. – Judith

Twenty-five years after Jesus’ Son, a haunting new collection of short stories on mortality and transcendence, from National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis Johnson

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating the ghosts of the past and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves.

Finished shortly before Johnson’s death, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.

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