- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo; Film tie-in edition (Reissue) edition (5 Jan 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0006545491
- ISBN-13: 978-0006545491
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 772,855 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘Gowdy is a writer now emerging as one of Canada’s most accomplished and outrageous… We So Seldom Look on Love will only deepen her reputation for fine technique and alarming content. These are unsettling and profoundly moving short stories to be read, and reread, and then to be dreamt upon… this is a remarkable and uplifting book.’
Toronto Globe and Mail
‘Barbara Gowdy’s stunning collection plants her firmly in the constellation of Canada’s bright literary lights… in this new set of stories she truly shines. Her insatiable curiousity, her candour and her cool wit emerge like chrysalids from the assembled deformity of this lively and memorable book.’
Montreal Gazette
Product Description
Film tie-in edition of this wonderful collection of prize-winning short stories from one of Canada’s brightest authors. The cult film success KISSED is based on the title story.
This powerful, disturbing and entirely original collection of prize-winning tales is a compelling exploration of all that is seemingly unnatural and outlandish. Populated by an assortment of freaks, Siamese twins, exhibitionists, necrophiles and transsexuals, these bizarre stories are shot through with Gowdy’s humorous, life-enhancing and essentially festive sympathy for the quirks and quiddities found in life’s carnival. Unflinchingly explicit and shocking, We So Seldom Look on Love is also moving and cathartic, pushing past the limits of convention into lives that are at once improbably fantastic and heartbreakingly real.
The title story has now been filmed as the movie KISSED, a shocking and moving film that gained critical acclaim at Sundance and Cannes and will have full theatrical release in Britain, coinciding with the release of this tie-in edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
A stellar book from a dazzling writer. This was Gowdy's first book and its range, deep sympathies, humour and extraordinary insight into our desperate human need for love are moving, continually surprising and ravishingly engaging. This is a writer who can make even loneliness a thing of beauty. I can honestly say this book changed my expectations of authorship, making me a much more demanding reader.
Format:Paperback
This out of print collection by Canadian writer Barbara Gowdy is well worth acquiring. The title story alone is unforgettable - chronicling the life of a young female necrophiliac. The subject might seem tasteless and unsympathetic, but Gowdy is a writer who has a unique gift when it comes to empathising with outsiders, and the story We So Seldom Look on Love was later made into the film, Kissed, starring Molly Parker. The other stories in the collection also follow outsiders - a transsexual, Siamese twins, etc. It's a shame Gowdy has not brought out more collections since this one is well over ten years old now, but for fans of these short stories, she has several novels available, and is fast becoming one of Canada's best writers. Check out Canadian Amazon for more reviews of this book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
10 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Wow!
31 Mar 2000
Format:Paperback
I'm not surprised - I knew Gowdy was an artist when I picked up her novel "Falling Angels" by accident. This book of short stories is an incredible and dizzying fall into the world of the bizarre - where everything that is off-the-wall, quirky, and unacceptable, becomes normal, textured, and sprinkled with a bit of reality - though not to the point of being ho-hum. Oh, no! Barbara Gowdy will grab you by the neck and MAKE you admit it's a beautiful world, filled with odd, gorgeous people. I love this author - she is the only writer I've ever known who revels and celebrates the crazy shapes and colours of the human animal.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Weird, Touching, Unclassifiable yet Oddly Beautiful
24 Aug 1998
Format:Paperback
What a find! Gowdy is an almost unfairly gifted writer whose modus operandi is to take some off-beat, off-the-wall subject and make it both touching and deeply human.
What kind of subject? Well, there's a girl with an odd kind of siamese twin (two legs who stick out from her chest), who goes to school quite normally, is loved by her family and, of course, runs off to join the circus. She's beautiful, and normal-enough looking (when she dresses to hide those legs) to pass in "normal" society, and she meets and marries a man. It's an old story, yes, but in one line, Gowdy puts a twist on it that is at once liberating and heartbreaking.
There's an old, non entirely sane woman, whose only joy in life is in taking in deformed and abused foster children; a woman who rediscovers her own sexuality when a peeping Tom pays a visit; and a young girl who can only love corpses. Gowdy's self-confidence, in tackling these themes with both grace and ease, is astonishing; the beauty of her prose, in making them poetic, touching and almost unbearably poignant, is equally astonishing.
Gowdy's writing is never abstruse, she never leaves the reader hanging; her stories are told in a straightforward manner, with a classical structure (beginning, middle, crisis plot point, and resolution/end), her characters and dialogue completely believable. The book will probably be most favored by fans of horror or fantasy, only because they have an easier ability to suspend disbelief. Others, however, should be equally moved and impressed.
I am anxious to read any other stories by this brilliant and moving writer.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Gowdy's a master at making the unusual
24 April 2003
Format:Paperback
An utterly amazing collection of short stories, many of which are related to one another, so they fit well together as a group. She has a knack for taking the most unusual or unconventional characters and situations and making them seem so realistic and sympathetic. One thing that always strikes me is that she seems to care about her characters so much. Despite their flaws, despite their outright freakishness at times, she, because of her affection for them, is able to convey to the reader their fundamental humanity. As a result, the focus is taken away from whatever makes them different, and we are instead drawn to see the similarities between them and ourselves.
Some images from this book will stay with me forever. Silvie and Sue as well as Simon and Samuel, two sets of siamese twins, each with their own story, for example. Incomparable characterization, simple but profound writing style, this book is absolutely unforgettable.
And, if I can sneak in another recommendation, check out "Mister Sandman" by the same author - as much as I loved this one, that one's even better!
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