This Angel on My Chest

by Leslie Pietrzyk

Overview

WINNER OF THE 2015 DRUE HEINZ LITERATURE PRIZE
Selected by Jill McCorkle

This Angel on My Chest is a collection of unconventionally linked stories, each about a different young woman whose husband dies suddenly and unexpectedly. Ranging from traditional stories to lists, a quiz, a YouTube link, and even a lecture about creative writing, the stories grasp to put into words the ways in which we all cope with unspeakable loss.
Based on the author’s own experience of losing her husband at age thirty-seven, this book explores the resulting grief, fury, and bewilderment, mirroring the obsessive nature of grieving. The stories examine the universal issues we face at a time of loss,  as well as the specific concerns of a young widow: support groups, in-laws, insurance money, dating, and remarriage. This Angel on My Chest ultimately asks, how is it possible to move forward with life while “till death do you part” rings in your ears—and, how is it possible not to?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822964452
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/20/2017
Series:	Drue Heinz Literature Prize Series , #67
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of two novels, Pears on a Willow Tree and A Year and a Day. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in many journals, including Gettysburg Review, The Sun, Shenandoah, River Styx, Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, New England Review, and the Washington Post Magazine. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Pietrzyk is a member of the core fiction faculty at the Converse low-residency MFA program and teaches in the MA Program in Writing at Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Table of Contents

Ten Things 1

Acquiescence 16

A Quiz 19

Heat 32

In a Dream 33

One Art 49

Do You Believe in Ghosts? 54

Slut 79

I Am the Widow 98

One True Thing 104

Someone in Nebraska 142

What I Could Buy 147

Truth-Telling for Adults 151

Chapter Ten: An Index of Food (Draft) 168

The Circle 181

Present Tense 210

Acknowledgments 215

Editorial Reviews

"With a delicate balance of cleverness and emotion, the sixteen stories in Pietrzyk's collection explore the event of her husband's sudden death at the breakfast table in 1997. . . . The author's wit, clarity, and literary inventiveness dance circles around the omnipresent sadness, making this book a prime example of the furious creative energy that can explode from the collision of grief with talent and craftsmanship. . . . Running through them are recurrent details that add the weight of obsessive memory: a carefully organized library of books, a bowl of cornflakes, the music of Springsteen (a misunderstood line of which gives the collection its name), an extramarital affair. Pietrzyk explores every aspect of the truth, including the parts you have to make up, and never gives in to sentimentality or self-pity. . . . This book is the winner of the distinguished Drue Heinz Literature Prize, upholding its tradition of excellence in short fiction. Like Magic Rocks in a fishbowl, these stories turn the stones of grief into something bright, crystalline, mesmerizing."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)


“By turning her personal experience into a universal story of loss, Pietrzyk transforms the stream-of-consciousness into a compelling narrative.”
—Washington City Paper


“The variety of voices, formats and emotions is rather remarkable and keeps the collection entertaining.”
—BookBrowse
 


“An oddball of a book that nevertheless elicits myriad emotions from the reader. Though at times emotionally draining, each piece—the whole book, in fact—is a masterwork of craft and an utterly raw exploration of grief.”
—Gandy Dancer



“A powerful and moving collection. These stories are held together by the experience of grief; a husband dying too soon and a wife left to go on. There is an abundance of wit, and wise observations about life. I always felt firmly rooted in the emotion, startled again and again by the weight of the simplest everyday objects and situations, against a backdrop of loss.”
—Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life


“A stunning book, a rare tour de force, this prismatic look at the devastation of losing a young spouse explodes with intelligence, with poetry, with personality, with a dazzling array of views from different perspectives all faced toward the same empty, motionless center. It is ablaze with Pietrzyk’s courage and her compassion. Pages fly by until the subject no longer merely frightens you but now terrifies, while making your heart more open, more understanding all at once. This, folks, is what writing is all about. I am in awe.”
—Robin Black, author of If I loved you, I would tell you this
 


“Leslie Pietrzyk has been a favorite writer of mine for a long time now. Don’t miss these stories.”
—Richard Bausch, author of Before, During, After

From the Publisher

★ 2015-07-16
Linked autobiographical fictions explore the loss of a young husband.With a delicate balance of cleverness and emotion, the 16 stories in Pietrzyk's (Pears on a Willow Tree, 2011, etc.) collection explore the event of her husband's sudden death at the breakfast table in 1997. Literal facts ("My husband, Robert K. Rauth, Jr., died of a heart attack when he was only 37") in some stories stand beside slightly altered ones in others (a husband named Roger, a husband who drove off the road, a husband who died in his early 40s). The author's wit, clarity, and literary inventiveness dance circles around the omnipresent sadness, making this book a prime example of the furious creative energy that can explode from the collision of grief with talent and craftsmanship. A few stories are traditionally told; many rely on formal strategies—a list, a quiz, a speech, an annotated index, various narrative voices, and a metafiction about the use of narrative voices. Running through them are recurrent details that add the weight of obsessive memory: a carefully organized library of books, a bowl of cornflakes, the music of Springsteen (a misunderstood line of which gives the collection its name), an extramarital affair. Pietrzyk explores every aspect of the truth, including the parts you have to make up, and never gives in to sentimentality or self-pity. As in Joyce Carol Oates' much less successful book A Widow's Story, one learns that the author is remarried—the last line of the last story is addressed to her second husband by name—but here there is no sense of duplicity or caginess. The relief is what we want, both for her and for ourselves. This book is the winner of the distinguished Drue Heinz Literature Prize, upholding its tradition of excellence in short fiction. Like Magic Rocks in a fishbowl, these stories turn the stones of grief into something bright, crystalline, mesmerizing.

Kirkus Reviews