ABOUT CHAIRS IN THE RAFTERS In a seaside Jersey town, a risk-averse illustrator on the brink of leaving her husband for another man spends one €œperfect night with perfect people.€ Warm, witty, and bursting with life, the friends of the man for whom she may or may not be leaving her husband thrill something deep inside her €“ and leave her grasping for a future she will chase down for years to come.
Already considered a master of the novel, National Book Award Winner Julia Glass, author of the bestselling Three Junes and The Widower€s Tale , proves here that she is just as adept at the long short story, offering up a rich tale of love, friendship, and the shockingly irrational choices that often lie behind our most monumental decisions.
Glass€s signature eye for detail and perfectly paced psychological simmer are on full display, but €œChairs in the Rafters€ explores utterly new terrain, beautifully demonstrating how our misconceptions about other peoples' lives (inner and outer) can fuel our own life choices. This is literary fiction at its best €“ the sort of story that forces you to look at your own twisting path with new eyes.
For those who have not yet had the pleasure to sink into a Julia Glass novel, it€s a perfect introduction. And for ardent fans, an excellent way to tide over until the much-anticipated release of her latest book, And the Dark Sacred Night, in April.
PRAISE FOR JULIA GLASS
€œOne doesn€t read so much as sink into a Julia Glass novel, lulled into an escapist reverie by her mastery.€ €" People
€œJulia Glass€s talent sends chills up my spine; Three Junes is a marvel.€Â€“Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
€œThree Junes brilliantly rescues, then refurbishes, the traditional plot-driven novel.€ €“ The New York Times Book Review
"A voluptuous treat." --Entertainment Weekly on The Whole World Over
€œAn enchanting story of familial bonds and late-life romance. Expect to be infatuated.€ €" Oprah on The Widower€s Tale
ABOUT JULIA GLASS Julia Glass is the author of the novels Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award in Fiction; The Whole World Over; and The Widower's Tale. Her third book, I See You Everywhere , a collection of linked stories, won the 2009 SUNY John Gardner Fiction Award. Her latest novel, And the Dark Sacred Night , will be published by Pantheon Books in April 2014. Her essays have been widely anthologized, most recently in Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book , edited by Sean Manning, and in the forthcoming Labor Day , a collection of essays on childbirth edited by Eleanor Henderson and Anna Solomon. Also a teacher of creative writing workshops at programs ranging from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown to the M.F.A. program at Brooklyn College, Julia lives with her two sons and their father on the North Shore of Massachusetts.