Still Life with Plumsis a vibrant collection of short stories that weaves together the outwardly distant lives of several strangers. With heaping doses of dark humor and magical realism, these ten stories enliven a cast of characters carefully speckled throughout the southern portion of the United States. From West Virginians, to Texans and Latinos,Still Life with Plumscircles the paths of a Black-Irish West Virginian, a wise-cracking dog groomer, an emasculated husband, a Guatemalan widow, a Japanese-Latin-American poster child from WWII, and a meticulous predator. Marie Manilla’s accessible prose is deceptively layered, as she births and wrestles this quirky ensemble that unflinchingly probes the human psyche, while affirming a concrete connection to a shared place and identity.
"Marie Manilla’sStill Life With Plumshouses in its pages a repository of heartache and joy. Its soul lies in life’s little moments, somehow still yet perpetually fleeing. Manilla’s words take flight in the mind and dance “like paper birds in the wind.” Inevitably, the words will root inside the reader, like the memory of a fossil or a Polaroid picture, and once there, they will cease to be still. Just as the people in these stories, they will keep on humming."
Glenn Taylor, author ofThe Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist
"This mesmerizing collection of stories is full of my favorite things: brilliantly vivid characters, rich cultural textures, bleak humor and surprising story turns. Manilla weaves a kind of literary magic that kept me reading late into the night."
Zoë Ferraris, author ofFinding NoufandCity of Veils
"Any reader who cares about mature, intelligent, graceful storytelling should be thinking very seriously about gettingStill Lifl#]
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