Bright Shards of Someplace Else: Stories

by Monica McFawn

Overview

In the eleven kaleidoscopic stories that make up Bright Shards of Someplace Else, Monica McFawn traces the combustive, hilarious, and profound effects that occur when people misread the minds of others. The characters—an array of artists, scientists, songwriters, nannies, horse trainers, and poets—often try to pin down another’s point of view, only to find that their own worldview is far from fixed.

The characters in McFawn’s stories long for and fear the encroachment of others. A young boy reduces his nanny’s phone bill with a call, then convinces her he can solve her other problems. A man who works at a butterfly-release business becomes dangerously obsessed with solving a famous mathematical proof. A poetry professor finds himself entangled in the investigation of a murdered student. In the final story, an aging lyricist reconnects with a renowned singer to write an album in the Appalachian Mountains, only to be interrupted by the appearance of his drug-addicted son and a mythical story of recovery.

By turns exuberant and philosophically adroit, Bright Shards of Someplace Else reminds us of both the limits of empathy and its absolute necessity. Our misreadings of others may be unavoidable, but they themselves can be things of beauty, charm, and connection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820352985
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	02/01/2018
Series:	Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction Series , #33
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

MONICA MCFAWN is a writer, comedian, and artist living in Michigan. Her short story collection Bright Shards of Someplace Else won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her comedy writing has appeared in The Offing and The Belladonna, and has been staged at Second City’s Mary Scruggs Works by Women Festival. McFawn is a recipient of a NEA Fellowship in Literature and Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is an associate professor at Northern Michigan University, where she teaches fiction and scriptwriting. When she isn’t writing, drawing, or teaching, she trains horses and cats.

Editorial Reviews

Lovers of fiction will enjoy plunging headfirst into an offbeat collection of thought-provoking short stories. . . . The eleven stories are simultaneously quirky and achingly resonant. . . . Discover: A Flannery O'Connor Award-winning collection of short stories from an intriguing new voice in fiction.

Shelf Awareness - Natalie Papailiou

With a watchmaker's precision, Monica McFawn crafts stories that tick and build slowly toward seemingly inevitable yet not-quite-arrived-at resolutions: a new supervisor puts off—again and again—firing a problem employee; the victim of a warehouse robbery beating crawls slowly toward a phone; two veterinarians make separate journeys to treat a gravely injured pony. Each scenario offers a Jamesian immersion into character consciousness that teems with delight and discovery and surprise. Like some newly discovered newt or loris that alters our view of an entire species, this book is strange and thrilling and very beautiful. I loved these stories.

Orientation and other Stories - Daniel Orozco

Every good story makes the reader see the world in a different way, but McFawn helps us to see differently on every single page. She writes with an inventiveness and precision that startles, entertains, and convinces: of course that's what snow is like, or a dead horse, or an aggrieved father. Her stories are fresh and often wonderfully strange but also deeply insightful and emotionally complex. McFawn's effervescent writing helps us both to see anew and to recognize ourselves.

This Is Not Your City - Caitlin Horrocks

Bright Shards of Someplace Else is Monica McFawn's first collection of short stories, and it's already won this year's Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Perhaps it was her idiosyncratic voice, or her flair for distinctive characters that the judges recognized. Or maybe it was her empathetic power. Either way, McFawn has talent. In these eleven stories she manages to range from fantastic to satiric to poignant.

NPR Books - Jane Ciabattari

In eleven short stories, McFawn explores the contradictions of varied characters and their skewed perspectives toward one another and themselves. . . . McFawn's tales shine when characters, both resolute and misguided, brace for the flawed truths of their predicaments.

Booklist - Leah Strauss

What a strange and wondrous band of misfits, isolatos, geniuses, and obsessives of every stripe populates Monica McFawn's Bright Shards of Someplace Else. Her specializing in such types and their crazy experiments tells us that McFawn is a romantic, not of the love and nature type but of the Mary Shelley and Frankenstein type. Her protagonists choose trouble, even bad trouble, every time, because the alternative—which they see only too clearly—is the yawn of nothing at the far edge of the possible.

Lord of Misrule - Jaimy Gordon

10/13/2014
Alienated people who can't get right in the world stand at the center of this pensive collection—winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. A teacher grapples with an accusation of murder in "Line of Questioning"; in "Out of the Mouths of Babes," a babysitter with a great deal to lose finds an unlikely ally in her young charge—but only temporarily. "The Chautauqua Sessions" paints an intricate portrait of a druggie son and his deeply resentful father, delving into the ways addiction can irreparably destroy trust and love. The settings are American—Massachusetts, Tennessee, a ranch in the middle of the country. Yet it is the fateful destination that unifies these characters: nearly all gaze uneasily in the direction of death, whether struggling to bury a horse in "Dead Horse Productions," or collecting a father's ashes in "Ornament and Crime," or managing a memorial video business in "Key Phrases." Bursts of insight illuminate these carefully crafted tales; McFawn somehow wrenches the deepest humanity out of even the most unlikable characters. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, McFawn's debut employs different narrative voices to create something singular. . . . McFawn approaches each story differently, not as an author imposing a single voice on disparate narratives but as an artist listening to her characters and finding the particular voice each one requires. . . . McFawn's empathy is astounding. . . . The rarest kind of literary debut—unpredictable and moving."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"In 11 short stories, McFawn explores the contradictions of varied characters and their skewed perspectives toward one another and themselves. . . . McFawn's tales shine when characters, both resolute and misguided, brace for the flawed truths of their predicaments." —Leah Strauss, Booklist

"Bright Shards of Someplace Else is Monica McFawn's first collection of short stories, and it's already won this year's Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Perhaps it was her idiosyncratic voice, or her flair for distinctive characters that the judges recognized. Or maybe it was her empathetic power. Either way, McFawn has talent. In these eleven stories she manages to range from fantastic to satiric to poignant." —Jane Ciabattari, NPR Books

"Lovers of fiction will enjoy plunging headfirst into an offbeat collection of thought-provoking short stories. . . . The 11 stories are simultaneously quirky and achingly resonant. . . . Discover: A Flannery O'Connor Award-winning collection of short stories from an intriguing new voice in fiction." —Natalie Papailiou, Shelf Awareness

"Bursts of insight illuminate these carefully crafted tales; McFawn somehow wrenches the deepest humanity out of even the most unlikable characters." —Publishers Weekly

"Every good story makes the reader see the world in a different way, but McFawn helps us to see differently on every single page. She writes with an inventiveness and precision that startles, entertains, and convinces: of course that's what snow is like, or a dead horse, or an aggrieved father. Her stories are fresh and often wonderfully strange but also deeply insightful and emotionally complex. McFawn's effervescent writing helps us both to see anew and to recognize ourselves." —Caitlin Horrocks, author of This Is Not Your City

"What a strange and wondrous band of misfits, isolatos, geniuses, and obsessives of every stripe populates Monica McFawn's Bright Shards of Someplace Else. Her specializing in such types and their crazy experiments tells us that McFawn is a romantic, not of the love and nature type but of the Mary Shelley and Frankenstein type. Her protagonists choose trouble, even bad trouble, every time, because the alternative—which they see only too clearly—is the yawn of nothing at the far edge of the possible." —Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award Winner, Lord of Misrule

"With a watchmaker's precision, Monica McFawn crafts stories that tick and build slowly toward seemingly inevitable yet not-quite-arrived-at resolutions: a new supervisor puts off—again and again—firing a problem employee; the victim of a warehouse robbery beating crawls slowly toward a phone; two veterinarians make separate journeys to treat a gravely injured pony. Each scenario offers a Jamesian immersion into character consciousness that teems with delight and discovery and surprise. Like some newly discovered newt or loris that alters our view of an entire species, this book is strange and thrilling and very beautiful. I loved these stories." —Daniel Orozco, author of Orientation and other Stories

From the Publisher

★ 2014-07-29
Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, McFawn's debut employs different narrative voices to create something singular. The boldness of McFawn's premises jumps out at the reader. In one story, a babysitter uses a precocious 9-year-old to solve her financial and familial woes. In another, a journalist interviews a biologist about his new art movement, "Microaestheticism," in which cellular material becomes abstract art when placed under a microscope. In two different tales, the problems of dealing with a dying or dead horse are made vivid. McFawn approaches each story differently, not as an author imposing a single voice on disparate narratives but as an artist listening to her characters and finding the particular voice each one requires. Her final piece, "The Chautauqua Sessions," provides the most compelling evidence of her talents. Struggling musician Danny, the narrator, has sequestered himself with his longtime songwriting partner in hopes of putting together a new record. When Danny's grown son, Dee, shows up to announce his sobriety, the father is skeptical; this isn't the first time he's heard such an announcement, and he uses his disbelief as a way of shielding himself from disappointment, even as Dee's story of recovery moves everyone else who hears it. McFawn's empathy is astounding, and the reader understands the ways in which Dee has wounded his father, even as the father's attempts to reveal his son as a liar become unhinged and reprehensible. "I used to think of emergencies as these character-galvanizing events," Danny says toward the end, "these moments when life does a casting call and shows a person for who they truly are." But McFawn is too smart a writer to fall back upon such easy answers. The rarest kind of literary debut—unpredictable and moving.

Kirkus Reviews