rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Cockfosters
    sub title: stories
  title info:
    title: Short stories. Selections
  name:
    name part: Simpson, Helen
    name part: 1957-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: short story
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: nyu
    date issued: 2017
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: 181 pages ; 20 cm.
  abstract: A wickedly wry, tender new collection from one of our finest internationally acclaimed short story writers. Nine virtuoso stories that take up the preoccupations and fixations of time's passing and of middle age and that take us from today's London and Berlin to the wild west of the United States and the wilder shores of Mother Russia, stories finely balanced between devastation and optimism. In the title story, long-ago school pals take the London Underground to the end of the Piccadilly line, Cockfosters Station, to retrieve a lost pair of newly prescribed bifocals ("The worst thing about needing glasses is the bumbling," says Julie. "I've turned into a bumbler overnight. Me! I run marathons!"), each station stop prompting reflections on their shared past, present and possible futures. In "Erewhon," a gender-role flip. After having sex with his wife, who has turned over and instantly fallen asleep, a man lies awake fretting about his body shape, his dissatisfaction with sex, his children, his role in the marriage. In "Kythera," lemon drizzle cake is a mother's ritual preparation for her (now grown) daughter's birthday as she conjures up memories of all the birthday cakes she has made for her, each one more poignant than the last, this new cake becoming a memento mori, an act of love and a symbol of transformation. And in "Berlin," a fiftysomething couple on a "Ring package" to Germany spend four evenings watching Wagner's epic, recalling their life together, reckoning with the husband's infidelity, the wife noting the similarity between their marriage and the Ring Cycle itself.
  table of contents: Cockfosters -- Torremolinos -- Erewhon -- Kentish Town -- Kythera -- Moscow -- Cheapside -- Arizona -- Berlin.
  note: Helen Simpson.
  subject:
    topic: Short stories
  subject:
    topic: FICTION
    topic: Literary
  subject:
    topic: FICTION
    topic: Contemporary Women
  subject:
    topic: FICTION
    topic: Short Stories (single author)
  classification: PR6069.I4226 A6 2017
  classification: 823/.914
  identifier: 9780451493071
  identifier: 0451493079
  identifier: 9780451493088
  identifier: 2016032867
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 161118
    record change date: 20211213155408.0
    record identifier: in00003838822