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Praise for
In Case We’re Separated
“When writers erect a visible scaffold around their work, they usually incorporate that architecture into the story. . . . What’s different about Mattison’s approach is that she has made the scaffolding invisible. . . . Radiant. . . . In Case We’re Separated is a book filled with felicitous writing and ferocious insight.”
—Sue Halpern, New York Times Book Review
“Alice Mattison writes well about secrets, the kind that are kept for generations despite dedicated, relentless prying by friends and family. As a young writer, she was the undisputed queen of wackiness, but with In Case We’re Separated, Mattison has matured into the kind of writer that makes you laugh.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Devastating. . . . Mattison’s stories have an arresting focus and navigate the clichés of Jewish-American fiction firmly and knowingly.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A jewel of a collection. . . . Masterful. . . . You’ll want to read the stories again to find the repeated objects, and to solidify the characters’ relationships in your mind—and you’ll find the stories are every bit as rich and satisfying the second time around.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Also by Alice Mattison
NOVELS
The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman
The Book Borrower
Hilda and Pearl
Field of Stars
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Men Giving Money, Women Yelling
The Flight of Andy Burns
Great Wits
POETRY COLLECTION
Animals
A Note to the Reader
This book’s thirteen stories imitate in prose the thirteen stanzas of a double sestina, using repeated topics or tropes in something like the way a sestina—the poetic form described in the story “Brooklyn Sestina”—uses repeated words. In the changing order prescribed by the sestina pattern, each story includes a glass of water, a sharp point, a cord, a mouth, an exchange, and a map that may be wrong.
Copyright
Some of these stories appeared in the following journals and anthologies:
“In Case We’re Separated,” Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories
“I Am Not Your Mother,” Ploughshares, The Pushcart Prize
“In the Dark, Who Pats the Air,” Shenandoah
“Brooklyn Sestina,” Michigan Quarterly Review
“Election Day,” Michigan Quarterly Review
“The Bad Jew,” Glimmer Train
“Future House,” Glimmer Train
“Pastries at the Bus Stop,” Ms. Magazine
“The Odds It Would Be You,” The Threepenny Review
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2005 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
IN CASE WE’RE SEPARATED. Copyright © 2005 by Alice Mattison. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2006.
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The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Mattison, Alice.
In case we’re separated : connected stories / Alice Mattison.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-621377-4
ISBN-10: 0-06-621377-0
1. Domestic fiction, American. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction.
3. Grandmothers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A8598I5 2005
813’.54—dc22
2005043422
* * *
ISBN-10: 0-06-093789-0 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-093789-8 (pbk.)
Epub Edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780062110497
06 07 08 09 10 /RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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