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    The Wild Grass And Other Stories
    The Wild Grass And Other Stories
    The Wild Grass And Other Stories
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    The Wild Grass And Other Stories

    By Davin Malasarn

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    About this ebook

    Davin Malasarn's short stories and flash fiction have earned multiple awards, including two Pushcart Prize nominations and the PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship. The pieces collected here represent Malasarn's most emotional and personal work over the last ten years. Readers will be transported around the world and into the depths of the human heart.

    In the opening story,"The Burning Girl," a young boy, Ben, is forced to participate in a Buddhist ritual while his mother is away. Ben doesn't understand what's going on, but he trusts his father and aunt to take care of him. As the evening progresses, Ben realizes that he has done something wrong. His family wants to change him, and he sees no alternative but to comply.

    The title story, "The Wild Grass," describes an old woman's investigation into the afterlife following her husband's death. She wonders if a python that visits the house is an angel, and she wonders when her own turn to die will come.

    The 17 stories in this collection will take readers to exotic settings around the world while showcasing how universal the human response truly is.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavin Malasarn
    Release dateMay 21, 2011
    ISBN9781458026484
    The Wild Grass And Other Stories
    Author

    Davin Malasarn

    Davin Malasarn lives in Los Angeles, CA. He has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and was a recipient of a 2008 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship.

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    • 5/5
      One of the strengths of David Malasarn’s writing is his ability to make his characters, no matter the age, sex, nationality, or status, real and familiar to the reader. I was continually surprised to feel I’d lived a story, though he wrote of an experience foreign to me.It’s no surprise that several in this collection of stories, written in beautiful, clean prose, have won awards. The only negative for me is that I reached the last story too soon.
    • 5/5
      Only after I’d finished the story “Bohemian,” with the careless egocentrism of its central character so subtly constructed, did I realise why I recognised Davin Malarsan’s style. There’s a piercing sparseness to his tales, reminiscent of the way Kazuo Ishiguro uses clean-cut phrases and precise description to reflect the deepest ideas. In his wide-ranging stories, Malarsan doesn’t pull any punches: many of his characters’ surface simplicity hides complex emotions that capture the reader with their poignancy, perfectly rendered through the elegant prose. There were odd occasions when I would have preferred some further clarity, but that’s because I prefer my endings drawn out and, hopefully, happy. But these stories don’t allow for any false sentiment; many of them are tinged with a vague sense of the fragility of human happiness. This underlying thread—or threat—of sadness is never overt, but is expertly woven into the lives of the characters we meet.When reading anthologies, I always end with one story that is by far my favourite. In this collection, there were three. In “Obaachan,” Jennifer’s double loss is magnified by the bargain she made with God; the last sneeze of a beloved pet in “I am Waiting for my Dogs to Die” overwhelms one and the callous, yet inevitable, abandonment of a first love in “Dolores,” all reflect the rising talent of this debut author.

    Book preview

    The Wild Grass And Other Stories - Davin Malasarn

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