In 'Live Bottomless, ' 13-year-old Jenny tells the painful and hilarious tale of her philandering father's fall from grace and the family's subsequent trip to Keys West as her parents attempt a 'geographical cure' for their troubled marriage. In 'The Southern Cross, ' Chanel, a girl of easy virtue and dubious reputation, chronicles her cruise around the Caribbean with three Atlanta developers. 'I may be old, but I'm not dead, ' begins Alice Scully, scandalizing her retirement-home writers' group in 'The Hap Memories Club.' And prim, old-maid Sarah is titillated by the housekeeper's horrific account of her daughter's 'blue wedding.' In 'The Bubba Stories, ' Charlene Christian explains, 'I made Bubba up in the spring of 1963 in order to increase my popularity with my girlfriends'; but this legendary brother takes on a life of his own. Paula's damaged brother Johnny, in the title story, is 'writing...
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In 'Live Bottomless, ' 13-year-old Jenny tells the painful and hilarious tale of her philandering father's fall from grace and the family's subsequent trip to Keys West as her parents attempt a 'geographical cure' for their troubled marriage. In 'The Southern Cross, ' Chanel, a girl of easy virtue and dubious reputation, chronicles her cruise around the Caribbean with three Atlanta developers. 'I may be old, but I'm not dead, ' begins Alice Scully, scandalizing her retirement-home writers' group in 'The Hap Memories Club.' And prim, old-maid Sarah is titillated by the housekeeper's horrific account of her daughter's 'blue wedding.' In 'The Bubba Stories, ' Charlene Christian explains, 'I made Bubba up in the spring of 1963 in order to increase my popularity with my girlfriends'; but this legendary brother takes on a life of his own. Paula's damaged brother Johnny, in the title story, is 'writing a new kind of book, ' constructing another narrative of his tragic life. Brothers, sisters, and friends appear in these stories as the narrators' other selves, offering other possibilities. Here we have news of the spirit, indeed: stories about longing and despair and imagination and grace, about love in all its strange and shifting forms.
"Delightful...comical...Smith never forgets that a great artist
makes her craft appear effortless. With News of the Spirit, she takes that
one step further: she appears to be having fun."
--Bookpage
"Smith's collection will not disappoint her fans."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Smith writes beautifully, evocatively and believably about women and
their feelings....What Smith doesn't write, what she leaves in the
tiny spaces between sentences, between narrative moments, is as important
as what she insists our attention be turned to....Above all, she
delights in storytelling, in the sounds of words and the ways that they
relate to meaning, to memory and to the mayhem we do to ourselves and
others, with the blessings thrown in that things can sometimes be made
whole to our advantage."
--Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"Smith excels at creating characters somewhat boggled by the reality of
who they've become."
--Publishers Weekly
