Family Dancing: Stories - Paperback

by David Leavitt (Author)

Thirty years ago, David Leavitt first appeared on the literary scene with a gutsy story collection that stunned readers and reviewers. Just twenty-three, he was hailed as a prodigy of sorts: "remarkably gifted" (The Washington Post), with "a genius for empathy" (The New York Times Book Review) and "a knowledge of others' lives . . . that a writer twice his age might envy" (USA Today). "Regardless of age," wrote the New York Times, "few writers so effortlessly achieve the sense of maturity and earned compassion so evident in these pages."

In "Territory," a well-intentioned, liberal mother, presiding over her local Parents of Lesbians and Gays chapter, finds her acceptance of her son's sexuality shaken when he arrives home with a lover. In the title story, a family extended through divorce and remarriage dances together at the end of a summer party-in the recognition that they are still bound by the very forces that split them apart. Tender and funny, these stories reveal the intricacies and subtleties of the dances in which we all engage.

Author Biography

David Leavitt has written story collections and novels including The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps, The Body of Jonah Boyd, The Indian Clerk (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and The Two Hotel Francforts. He is also the author of two nonfiction works, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Florence, A Delicate Case. He is professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and edits the literary magazine Subtropics.

www.davidleavittwriter.com