By Love Possessed: Stories

By Lorna Goodison

These beautifully crafted stories will introduce readers to the fiction of one of our literary bright lights – Lorna Goodison, the internationally renowned poet and award-winning author of the memoir From Harvey River. In sensuous language textured with the cadences of Creole speech, these stories vividly evoke a world where pride, injustice, love, and unexpected changes of fortune leave their mark but cannot extinguish the human spirit.

When her past lover returns to Jamaica with his Irish bride, a successful businesswoman must contend with her old flame’s renewed courtship. A well-known chanteuse with humble beginnings tells a young female reporter the tale of her life’s great turnaround. In the Pushcart Prize-winning story “By Love Possessed,” Goodison reveals the melancholy and resilience of a woman whose illusions about her dream man come to a disturbing and abrupt end.

With warm humour, empathy, and an unsentimental and perceptive eye for the foibles of human relationships, Goodison immerses us into the lives of an unforgettable community of people as they face challenges both intensely private and universally recognizable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9780771035722

Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison is an internationally recognized poet who has published eight books of poetry and two collections of short stories. In 1999 she received the Musgrave Gold Medal from Jamaica, and her work has been widely translated and anthologized in major collections of contemporary poetry. Born in Jamaica, Goodison now teaches at the University of Michigan. She divides her time between Ann Arbor and Toronto.

Reviews for By Love Possessed

[tea58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

aalbc.comlorna-goodisonJamaicans living in Jamaica and in the states while loving and not loving is an idea about what each story is about. Lorna Goodison in By Love Possessed made me feel as if I were in the center of a neighborhood where houses had no walls. This feeling gave me the ability hear and see exactly what was going on with each person in a story. I have never liked all the stories in a collection. In this anthology I only disliked one. However I did have trouble reading the Jamaican dialect. It slowed down my usual reading pace. I don't know the answer to whether the short stories feel more real because of the Jamaican speech patterns. The author does so well describing foods and places I feel the intensity of each story would remain just as strong if written totally in American. I am looking forward to reading Lorna Goodison's poetry and a book titled From Harvey River.