In Between Days

Zusatztext 77496946 Informationen zum Autor Andrew Porter is the author of the story collection The Theory of Light and Matter . A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received a Pushcart Prize, a James Michener/Copernicus Fellowship, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His work has appeared in One Story , The Threepenny Review , and on public radio’s Selected Shorts . Currently, he teaches fiction writing and directs the creative writing program at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Klappentext "Andrew Porter is a born storyteller . . . He makes his own space instantly and invites you in. Hats off!" -Barry Hannah From a commanding new voice in fiction comes a novel as perceptive as it is generous: a portrait of an American family trying to cope in our world today, a story of choices and doubts and transgressions. The Hardings are teetering on the brink. Elson-once one of Houston's most promising architects, who never quite lived up to expectations-is recently divorced from his wife of thirty years, Cadence. Their grown son, Richard, is still living at home: driving his mother's minivan, working at a local coffee shop, resisting the career as a writer that beckons him. But when Chloe Harding gets kicked out of her East Coast college, for reasons she can't explain to either her parents or her older brother, the Hardings' lives start to unravel. Chloe returns to Houston, but the dangers set in motion back at school prove inescapable. Told with piercing insight, taut psychological suspense, and the wisdom of a true master of character, this is a novel about the vagaries of love and family, about betrayal and forgiveness, about the possibility and impossibility of coming home. I.    SINCE HIS DIVORCE, Elson has fallen into the habit of stopping by the Brunswick Hotel for a quick drink after work. He likes the Brunswick Hotel because it’s one of the newest hotels in the city and because he knows that no one he knows will ever find him here. He likes the anonymity of it, of drinking here alone in the third-floor bar area, of sitting here at the window, staring out across the street at the futuristic office buildings, at their slick glass surfaces, knowing that behind these glass surfaces men and women in finely pressed suits are probably packing up their bags and briefcases, making plans for dinner or drinks. He likes to imagine these people leaving, likes to watch them as they walk out the door and get in their cars. There’s something strangely soothing about it all, about this daily routine of watching the city empty out, of watching it grow quiet and dark.    Tonight, the barroom is empty, save for a few out-of-town businessmen, drinking alone, and outside the window, the city is quiet, a light rain coming down now, a cold winter rain, which is somewhat atypical for Houston this time of year. In an hour from now, he will be meeting Lorna Estrada, the woman he has been sleeping with for the past six months, the woman he met just after his wife left him, at a barbecue at his friend Dave Millhauser’s house. Lorna is twenty-seven years old, and many years his junior, and yet surprisingly mature for her age. He sometimes speculates that this is because of her Filipino upbringing, because of the strictness of her parents, or other times because of the fact that she came to the States so young, that she got a firsthand glimpse of how cruel the world could be to a non-English-speaking adult, especially in a city like Houston. The first and only child in her family to ever receive a degree in anything, Lorna works as a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts and shares with Elson a strange and fervent interest in minimalist architecture. That Elson is himself an architect was perhaps part of the initial allure, the fact that they could talk with ease about the work of Claudio Silvestrin or Vincent Van Duysen or Sout...

Product details

• Authors: Andrew Porter
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 04.06.2013
• EAN: 9780307475183
• ISBN: 978-0-307-47518-3
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 206 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature