Book description
Solitude and Other Stories represents Arturo Vivante's quest to use writing to uncover hidden truths. These twenty-four short stories-set in Italy, New England, and Canada-explore various themes, including, as the title story says, solitude. Vivante begins the narrative with a self-oblivious solitude that will become loneliness. Day after day, night…
Why read it?
1 author picked Solitude and Other Stories as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book won the University of Notre Dame Fiction Prize in 2004.
What I liked about this, to my mind, increasingly autobiographical collection of short stories is Vivante’s voice. His writing is as authentic and straightforward as you’ll find in any literary fiction—no gimmicks, no self-regarding cleverness, just a plainspoken realist who touches a nerve, or two, in every story.
Set in Italy, Canada, and the United States, you get geographical as well as thematic diversity, but as far as I can tell, much is focused on the ups and downs of his own professional and family life. I found…
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