Polly Dugan lives in Portland and is a reader at Tin House magazine. A former employee of Powell's Books, she is an alumna of the Tin House Writers Workshop. Dugan's first published story, A Matter of Time, was Line Zero's Spring 2012 Literary Contest Winner, Masquerades (as One At a Time), was Narrative's Story of the Week (December 2012), and Kitten Season was an Honourable Mention Recipient in Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers (August 2009).
"A debut collection that could practically pass for a novel....
Subtlety of characterization is often the writer's strength, as her
stories move through the conventional details of domesticity to
panic attacks and 'uncharted insanity, ' showing the fragility
beneath even the most stable lives."--Kirkus Reviews
"A quiet triumph.... SO MUCH A PART OF YOU marries the scope of a
novel with the graceful economy of a good short story. The linked
stories in the collection are individually modest, almost
unobtrusive. Set against one another, though, they reveal
surprising connections-reflecting perspective and insight back onto
themselves.... Part of the pleasure of this book is that it brings
the reader into glancing proximity to so many people, and so many
stories. It's about as close as fiction comes to capturing the way
people really do move in and out of each other's' lives."--Alison
Hallett, Portland Mercury
"A solid debut.... Dugan's writing flows well and with
thoughtfulness as she explores love, loss, and friendship through
the three main characters and their families. Their decisions and
foibles make for some emotional reading."--Publishers Weekly
"By portraying various individuals in their twenties and thirties
as they move through formative stages in their lives, the ten
linked stories in Dugan's debut collection convincingly capture the
human condition.... With decisive economy and the dramatic
immediacy lent by her use of the present tense, Dugan's powerful
stories present a fast-paced, cohesive, and satisfying
read."--Joyce Townsend, Library Journal
"Full of emotion. [Dugan's] characters experience love, loss, grief
and anxiety, and she conveys those emotions beautifully."--Gayle
Weiswasser, Readerly
"Polly Dugan makes the greatest deal the best of literature can
offer-she will be honest, completely bare, and deliver a reader
wholly into the secret world of her character's empathy. What a
powerful and glorious thing it was to become these characters, to
have my worldview touched by their lives. It's a rare skill to
write pain with such love, such care, such warmth, and like Alice
Munro and Elizabeth Strout, Polly Dugan has achieved a small
miracle in breaking my heart and still having me ask for more. SO
MUCH A PART OF YOU announces a potent and fresh new voice to the
landscape of short fiction."--Alan Heathcock
"Polly Dugan strikes the heart in SO MUCH A PART OF YOU."--Vanity
Fair, "Hot Type"
"Polly Dugan's stories read like whispered secrets. With their
quiet drama, their nuanced internal conflicts, their characters
full of longing, they immerse us in the messy mysteries of ordinary
lives. But their vision is clear-headed and generous: they show us
that even our briefest connections, our smallest actions, our most
private thoughts can have great weight and consequence."--Scott
Nadelson, author of Aftermath
"Readers, take notice.... Strong characterization and acute
rendering of settings provide glimpses into the successes and
sorrows of these middle-class Irish Catholics.... Although short
story fans are a natural audience for this promising debut, it will
also appeal to general fiction readers."--Ellen Loughran, Booklist
(starred review)
"The ten stories in this collection are beautiful and connect in
unexpected ways-but underneath the beauty, the stories hum with
electricity that is as unpredictable as a downed power line, as
dangerous as the third rail, and I read with my breath held, and my
heart in my throat. These are the best kind of stories-dark and
tender and sharp."--Jodi Angel, author of You Only Get Letters From
Jail
"There's a rawness to Polly Dugan's stories that lure you in and
won't let go. The settings may be every day, but SO MUCH A PART OF
YOU lingers in the imagination."--Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of The
Pretty One
"This is what short story should be: exact and faithful
invocations, full of nerve and stranded emotion, which leave
eddying waves of thought and strangeness that linger long after the
covers are closed shut. The stories are simultaneously eerie and
poignant. They achieve a cool distance and the captured moment, the
effect of which is how lonely and alien we can be to ourselves and
together. The pathway to the heart is through the mind. I think of
such writers as Joy Williams and Ann Beattie, only more spare and
more raw and who, in their own way, were more spare and raw than
O'Connor and Welty."--Robert Olmstead
"Utterly real and insightful."--BookPage
"What struck me about the stories in SO MUCH A PART OF YOU is how
finely wrought they are, how controlled."--Steve Almond, Rumpus
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
