Other Peoples Love Affairs, D. Wystan Owen
Other Peoples Love Affairs, D. Wystan Owen
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Other People's Love Affairs
Stories

Author: D. Wystan Owen

Narrator: Antony Ferguson

Unabridged: 6 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/21/2018


Synopsis

In the classic tradition of fiction by James Joyce, William Trevor, and Elizabeth Strout, these interconnected stories will strike a deep and resounding emotional chord.

In the ten luminous stories of D. Wystan Owen's Other People's Love Affairs, the people of Glass, a picturesque village on the rugged English coast, are haunted by longings and deeply held secrets, captive to pasts that remain as alive as the present. Each story takes us into the lives of characters reaching earnestly and often courageously for connection to the people they have loved. Owen observes their heartbreaks, their small triumphs, and their generous capacity for grace.

A young nurse, reeling from the disappearance of her mother, forges an unlikely friendship with a local vagrant who might know why her mother vanished. A young boy is by turns dazzled and disillusioned by a trip to the circus with a family friend. A widower revisits the cinema where, as a teenager, he and an older woman had secret trysts that both thrilled and baffled him. A woman is offered fragile, uneasy forgiveness for a cruel act from years ago. And in the title story, a shopkeeper's vision of the woman she loved is upended by the startling revelation of a secret life. Surprising and powerful, these stories mark the debut of a remarkable new talent.

About D. Wystan Owen

D. Wystan Owen holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His fiction and essays have appeared in A Public Space, the American Scholar, Literary Hub, and the Threepenny Review, where he is deputy editor. A citizen dually of the United States and the United Kingdom, he now lives in Northern California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Martie on September 25, 2018

Genre: Literary Fiction Publisher: Algonquin Books Pub. Date: August 21, 2018 My first thought, once I finished the last page of this connected short story collection, was that the author, D. Wystan Owen, manages to pen a book to the Beatles’ song “Eleanor Rigby.” With its lyrics of, “All the lonely......more

Goodreads review by Kasa on August 21, 2018

Usually I read short story collections over a period of days, particularly if they are exceptionally fine. I've said in other reviews that when good, short stories are hard work for a reader and to honor the author, must be sipped over time. However, since today is the launch date (preventing me fro......more

Goodreads review by JimZ on December 25, 2019

This was a superb book of short stories. I can’t say there was a bad one in the bunch. I read the stories in one day, and it was an enjoyable reading experience (a very nice Christmas Eve!). His writing style reminds me of that of William Trevor, so I would consider that to be a fine compliment. Wha......more

Goodreads review by catherine ♡ on July 25, 2018

Unfortunately this one didn't work for me. I really liked some of the writing, and the author definitely has a way with words that plays with beautiful figurative language. Overall, however, I just felt a little lost reading this book, and I don't think the stories were really exciting or engaging e......more

Goodreads review by Roslynne on October 13, 2018

This is a very small, understated book. I gave it 4 stars because the author writes beautifully. But otherwise, it's a 3 or 3 1/2. The blurb says it's interconnected stories, but it's not. Though the stories all have an attachment to the same village, the characters from one story don't show up in o......more