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Longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the stories in
What Isn’t Remembered explore the burden, the power, and the nature of love between people who often feel misplaced and estranged from their deepest selves and the world, where they cannot find a home. The characters yearn not only to redefine themselves and rebuild their relationships but also to recover lost loves-a parent, a child, a friend, a spouse, a partner.
A young man longs for his mother’s love while grieving the loss of his older brother. A mother’s affair sabotages her relationship with her daughter, causing a lifelong feud between the two. A divorced man struggles to come to terms with his failed marriage and his family’s genocidal past while trying to persuade his father to start cancer treatments. A high school girl feels responsible for the death of her best friend, and the guilt continues to haunt her decades later.
Evocative and lyrical, the tales in
What Isn’t Remembered uncover complex events and emotions, as well as the unpredictable ways in which people adapt to what happens in their lives, finding solace from the most surprising and unexpected sources.
List of contents
Boys on the Moskva River
All of Me
The Heart of Things
A Lullaby for My Father
Heroes of Our Time
Simple Song #9
Nepenthe
Beloveds
The Suicide Note
Second Person
Gene Therapy
And What Rough Beast
No Other Love
Pictures of the Snow
Champions of the World
What Isn’t Remembered
Acknowledgments
About the author
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, a Russian Armenian ÉmigrÉ, has published fifty stories and received eight Pushcart nominations. Her work has appeared in
Indiana Review, the
Southern Review,
Gulf Coast,
TriQuarterly,
Prairie Schooner,
Nimrod, and elsewhere. Gorcheva-Newberry is the winner of the 2013 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
Summary
The stories in this collection explore the burden, the power, and the nature of love between people who often feel misplaced and estranged from their deepest selves and the world, where they cannot find a home.
