"Any reader unfamiliar with Christine Schutt’s work should prepare for an unprecedented event. This is courageous fiction," writes Diane Williams, acclaimed author and editor of NOON, in her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading.
"The duchess in this story is an older woman in extremis. She is in mourning for her beloved husband, whose garden, in all its patterns and colorations, has sustained them both. Now his remark about gardens dying with their gardeners rouses her to keep the garden alive and so keep some part of him alive. She is a noble woman in her efforts—a flower in the garden."
About Recommended Reading:
Great authors inspire us. But what about the stories that inspire them? Recommended Reading, the latest project from Electric Literature, publishes one story every week, each chosen by a great author or editor. In this age of distraction, we uncover writing that's worth slowing down and spending some time with. And in doing so, we help give great writers, literary magazines, and independent presses the recognition (and readership) they deserve.
About the author:
Christine Schutt is the author of a short-story collections Nightwork, and A Night, A Day, Another Night, Summer. The former was chosen by poet John Ashbery as the best book of 1996 for the Times Literary Supplement. Her first novel, Florida, was a National Book Award finalist for fiction in 2004. Her second novel, All Souls, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist in 2009. Her new novel, Prosperous Friends, is out now from Grove Press.
About the Guest Editor:
Founded in 2000 by Diane Williams—NOON (a literary annual)—is dedicated to supporting important literary art. It has been critically acclaimed both in the U.S. and abroad. Its stories have been reprinted frequently and have won many prizes over the years, including an O.Henry Prize for “The Duchess of Albany” presented here. Two of its stories were selected for the 2014 Pushcart Prize edition. The current NOON was reviewed in The Los Angeles Times this April by David Olin in an article entitled “The Discreet Charm of NOON.” He called it “…a compendium of unlikely pleasures: short prose and illustrations that challenge us to think about meaning and narrative….[I]t is elegantly designed and curated, a journal that wears its intentions on its sleeve. These are oblique stories, stories that exist in the interior, getting at the things we know but do not know we know.”
