PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Jeffrey Ford: Jeffrey Ford was born on Long Island in New York State in 1955 and grew up in the town of West Islip. He studied fiction writing with John Gardner at S.U.N.Y Binghamton. He s been a college English teacher of writing and literature for 30 years. He is the author of eight novels including The Girl in the Glass and four short story collections. He has received the World Fantasy, Nebula, Edgar, and Shirley Jackson awards. He lives with his wife Lynn in a century old farm house in a land of slow clouds and endless fields.
Praise for Jeffrey Ford's award-winning books: Surreal, unsettling, and more than a little weird. Ford has a rare gift for evoking mood with just a few well-chosen words and for creating living, breathing characters with only a few lines of dialogue. --Booklist Children are the original magic realists. The effects that novelists of a postmodern bent must strive for come naturally to the young, a truth given inventive realization in this wonderful quasi-mystery tale by Jeffrey Ford. --Boston Globe on THE SHADOW YEAR Jeffrey Ford s latest triumph, THE SHADOW YEAR, is as haunting as it is humorous readers will recognize real talent in Ford s vivid, unerring voice. --Louisville Courier Journal on THE SHADOW YEAR Superb, heartbreaking, and masterfully written . . . It s proof of Jeffrey Ford s narrative power that, ultimately, the distinction [between real and invented] doesn t much matter. His made-up world trumps ours. --Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction The Shadow Year captures the totality of a lived period, its actualities and its dreams, its mundane essentials and its odd subjective imperatives; it is a work of episodic beauty and mercurial significance. --Nick Gevers, Locus Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen. --Jonathan Carroll, author of The Wooden Sea Unusual and provocativesometimes shocking, sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes humorous, this collection will please fans of Raymond Carver and Flannery O Connor. Recommended. (School Library Journal on THE DROWNED LIFE) Spooky and hypnotic...Recommended for all public libraries. (Library Journal) Ford travels deep into the wild country that is childhood in this novel the observations and adventures of these sharp, wayward children provide more than enough depth to be satisfying. (New York Times on THE SHADOW YEAR) A collection of surreal, melancholy stories dealing with everything from worlds of the drifting dead to drunken tree parties. Ford is the author of the superlative, creepy Well-Built City trilogy and his writing is both powerful and disturbing in the best possible way. (Gawker on THE DROWNED LIFE) [Ford s] writing is both powerful and disturbing in the best possible way. (io9 on Jeffrey Ford) The 16 stories in this collection are a perfect introduction to Ford s work and illustrate the vast range of his imaginationIf you haven t discovered Ford, it s time you did. His carefully crafted novels and short stories are all top-notch. Grade: A. (Rocky Mountain News)
