List: A Novel...Author: Matthew Roberson and 50 similar items

Author: Matthew Roberson; Format: Paperback; Copyright Date: 2014; Publisher: FC2; ISBN: 9781573661775; List Price: $17.95; Length: 209 pages. Condition: Very Good. Cover and binding are both still in overall great shape, and pages are unmarked. Same cover design as that shown here. Synopsis: In these glimpses of middle America, lists guide the stories--ordering the characters' lives, capturing their obsessions, cataloguing their complaints, accounting for their desires, and serving as prayers toward ways of life that might work. Here the man, the woman, the boy, and the girl struggle through the home improvement projects, the conflicts at work and school, the job loss, the illesses, and the confrontations with ageing that constitutes their claustrophobic days. Their lives revolve around gadgets, mad cleanliness, bland vans, and deadly entropies that make up the suburban middle class. The man, digression-addled, searches in vain for a screw with which to hang a single print. The woman packs her family off to a water-park vacation to escape from her illness. The boy starts speaking his mind at school. The girl hangs on behind the scenes. They try to convince themselves something can always change, but the narratives they inhabit prove it can't...it doesn't. Things will just keep on, and with a decided list. List's sections are variations--spare, quietly comic, haunting, and addictively readable--often written in short declarative sentences, and all about gaps, about what isn't said between people, about developments that never transpire, about white spaces on the page that make those absences present. When all is said and done, List is a curative mix of satire and sympathy. While the stories empty out the ambitions and materialism of the middle class, they also create an emotional landscape replete with the hilarity and humility of very human vulnerability. The great gift of these stories is their alchemy of innovation, judgment and commiseration. Priority Mail shipping for this item costs $10.00 at the request of a buyer. Otherwise, the shipping rate given here applies to orders shipped via Media Mail within the U.S. only. Orders consisting of multiple purchases packaged together ship by any of these delivery methods at a discounted rate, usually for only $1.00 per additional item plus the shipping fee for the first item (determined to be the one with the highest delivery charge). International buyers: please contact us with your destination country for applicable base shipping rates. Multiple purchases that are packaged together save shipping costs for you, too! Payment is expected within two weeks of placing your order for the first item within a shipment. Paypal is preferred, but money orders and checks (either personal or cashier's) are also accepted. Orders typically ship within 48 hours of PROCESSED payment, excluding weekends and holidays. Inquiries from all shoppers are responded to promptly and courteously. Buyers are encouraged to ask questions prior to placing orders, as all sales are final unless the product you receive differs significantly from that which was advertised here in terms of either the product itself or its promised condition. In other words, "buyer's remorse" does not qualify for a refund. Exceptions are made only in the event that a buyer is willing to return at his or her own expense an unopened, BRAND NEW item for a refund of the original purchase price only. No original shipping costs will be refunded, unless we are at fault for sending you the wrong item or misrepresenting the product and/or its condition. This hasn't happened yet, but if it does: you are guaranteed a refund of the purchase price, the original shipping fee, PLUS the cost to ship the item back to us. In addition, we promise that no retaliatory feedback will be left for negative comments received on such transactions. We stand behind our service, and accept responsibility for any mistakes made. Thank you for looking!