Universal Table

LIVE YOUR LIFE & OTHER STORIES
KERRY LANGAN

In her second book of stories Kerry Langan explores, through characters drawn from academe and the wider world, the myths that unconsciously shape our behavior and our sense of possibility. In Live Your Life, an unemployed philosophy major fresh from college tries to live out his utopia, a teenage telemarketer learns success is more than cold calls and sales volume, a jilted groom stumbles into a full life, a soap opera star finally learns where his character ends and he begins. In A Lonely Virtue, stories set in a small college town, a student balances the scales with her seductive teacher, a competitive professor learns what he has in common with a colleague he scorns, a shy dean discovers courage and his ambitious wife come-uppance. We recognize ourselves in these characters; they cause us to wince and to laugh, and to wonder what myths we may be blindly living by—and what surprises await us if we open our eyes.   216 pp.  ISBN 978-0-9827262-6-6

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REVIEWS

Kerry Langan will delight her readers with her comic eye, her honest heart, and her feats of characterization. These smart, lively stories are more than a pleasure to read. They are fun to read.
          Joe David Bellamy, author of Green Freedom and Atomic Love

The characters in Live Your Life, Kerry Langan's masterful new collection of short stories, are you, me, and everybody: people navigating the ordinariness of life, and coming to terms with how often ordinary falls short of expectation. Her characters work in hair salons or in telemarketing call centers; they are aging soap opera actors with waning careers. They are also jilted lovers, divorcées, wounded children, and middle-aged women who remain invisible to the second-rate entertainers they hoped might have saved them from loneliness. With sharp eye and even sharper intuition, Langan captures every disappointment, every yearning, but also brings to light those fractional turns each person makes that signal a determination to continue on and lead lives of quiet dignity. Langan possesses a delicate yet assured touch and no tendency toward the sentimental. In her capable hands, characters make progress that is subtle, never mawkish, and every step is imbued with humanity.
          Jane Ward, author of Hunger and The Mosaic Artist

Kerry Langan has an eye for the grace that sometimes comes as the unanticipated consequence of loneliness and loss. She transforms even the tokens of her characters' absurdities and failures - a pogo stick, a For Sale sign, an inexpensive ring - into unexpected instruments of grace. Each of her wonderful stories is a lesson in sympathy, delivered with gentle humor and a deep understanding of the human heart.
          Rob Hardy, author of The Collecting Jar