Impossible Appetites: Nine Stories (The Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction)

The collection of nine stories which won the 1980 Short Fiction Award is woven in a pattern so subtle that reading it is like writing your own nine-part novel. The author allows brief glimpses into the tormented journals of Joseph Quaile, a man of acute compassions and consuming hungers; then juxtaposes them with the fiction Quaile writes to scourge his demons and come to terms with himself and the people he loves. This is a dispassionate intelligence in passionate pursuit of freedom and reconciliation.--Front flap The collection of nine stories which won the 1980 Iowa Short Fiction Award is woven in a pattern so subtle that reading it is like writing your own nine-part novel. The author allows brief glimpses into the tormented journals of Joseph Quaile, a man of acute compassions and consuming hungers, then juxtaposes them with the fiction Quaile writes to scourge his demons and come to terms with himself and the people he loves. This is a dispassionate intelligence in passionate pursuit of freedom and reconciliation.