A winner is revealed + PANK reviews Living Arrangements
Posted on 01 June 2012
Stuffing too much paper into the toilet. Wondering who’s on first. A soldier crouched in the dust. A beloved old copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Slipping down a muddy slope. Ski lessons in jeans. Caramel, you old smoothie…
Those are snippets from the memories some of you shared in this post when you entered to win Anthony Doerr’s Memory Wall. I am happy to announce, thanks to a little help from Random.org, that the winner is…
Congratulations! I’ll be in touch for your address so I can mail you Doerr’s collection.
In other news, PANK reviewed Living Arrangements, and I’m considering taking the reviewer out for a falafel. (She lives in Ohio, apparently not too far from me, so never say never.) She calls the title story “badass.” Enough said. Well, except for these quick quotes:
Laura Maylene Walter’s Living Arrangements is a collection of finely honed stories, all deeply concerned with place and memory. Her stories are quietly resonant – beneath the everyday veneer of each of her characters, Walter clarifies their internal tempests; their struggles with identity and belonging, desire and grief.
***
It’s easy for me to understand how Annabelle knows enough to know he wants. Almost every girl I’ve ever known first felt eyes on her body before she was fourteen. We knew what we were expected to be, right then and there, and from then on. It was an overwhelming feeling that is difficult to describe, even now, in a concise manner, so I’ll just say that Annabelle is a realistic mess of a girl with eyes on her…
***
Living Arrangements, for me, is about the search for a place in society, particularly as a young woman, and the way that we all carry and feed off of our pasts like second beating hearts.
With this review coming out just days after Fiction Writers Review posts my interview and makes Living Arrangements their book of the week, would it be a little too much for me to officially declare this Living Arrangements Week? Hm. I’ll take the weekend to think about it.
Photo: slurpiesandstraws
7 responses to A winner is revealed + PANK reviews Living Arrangements
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Living Arrangements continues to pick up steam! This is awesome Laura. If you don’t proclaim this LA week, I will.
Thanks, Laura!
And it’s totally LA week, except it should officially start now so it will continue on even longer. :)
Congrats! What a great review–she nailed it.
(and congrats to sarah w. i’m glad someone who gives away so much won something so worthwhile! well deserved.)
How appropriate with all that’s going on with you right now regarding your living arrangements…..congratulations on everything. The review was totally awesome and so true!
I agree with Sarah (congrats to you I’m sure you will love Doerr) you are the star of the week. I have my copy of LA but it’s on my pile of books to take to Corsica – books I’m pretty sure I will love, to be read in a dusty eucalyptus-scented camping ground next to the beach!
Fantastic news for you. I definitely think it is Living Arrangements week.
Thanks for the kind words Laura (and Josephine and Carolyn)! And congrats on all the well-deserved buzz. Next time you’re in the Columbus area, we will have to have a falafel. :)