The practical heart: four novellas

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English
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ISBN:
9780375727634
9780307764140
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Grouping Information

Grouped Work ID7203f336-f4be-14c6-7bc9-32a410be12be
Grouping Titlepractical heart four novellas
Grouping Authorallan gurganus
Grouping Categorybook
Grouping LanguageEnglish (eng)
Last Grouping Update2024-03-27 03:08:25AM
Last Indexed2024-03-27 03:13:50AM

Solr Fields

accelerated_reader_point_value
0
accelerated_reader_reading_level
0
author
Gurganus, Allan, 1947-
author_display
Gurganus, Allan
available_at_catalog
Middle Creek Community
North Regional
Oberlin Regional
collection_catalog
Adult Fiction
detailed_location_catalog
Middlecreek Community - Adult Fiction
North Regional - Adult Fiction
Oberlin Regional - Adult Fiction
display_description
A luminous quartet, five years in the writing, reveals even more fully the breathtaking range of "a storyteller in the grand tradition" (New York Times).
Allan Gurganus's voice—by turn bawdy and serene, folkloric and profane—deepens as it soars into this quiet masterwork. Four new fables—rich in event, comedy, experience—surge with the force of history's headlines versus sidestreet human fortitude. Improbable heroes and heroines spiral outward from Gurganus's familiar Carolina terrain. Each fires into a wild and differing direction, all in quest of some fantasy that's practically impossible:
—An impoverished immigrant has her portrait painted (or not) by John Singer Sargent.
—A young man's devotion to saving eighteenth-century homes—and their odd lingering ghosts—helps him find unlikely ways to renovate his own mortality.
—A pillar of the community becomes, over the course of one cartoon matinee, its pariah.
—A beloved, transfixingly homely father shows his village and his only son a decency stronger than race,
humiliation, or even death itself.
These characters' quixotic missions prove mysterious, often even to themselves. Their legacies are not easily deciphered. And yet, their most impractical wishes soon become the heartiest facts about each. They manage to wrest battle-courage from everyday indecision. Out of superstition and convention, they lift certainty. They each find a wealth of consoling truths banked—immortal—in the all-too-human heart.
Allan Gurganus's great powers—announced more than a decade ago by Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All—here achieve a yearning exuberance worthy of a new Whitman. These leaps of sexual longing, empathy, and faith become a major new gift from this essential fablemaker.
format_catalog
Book
eBook
format_category_catalog
Books
eBook
id
7203f336-f4be-14c6-7bc9-32a410be12be
isbn
9780307764140
9780375727634
last_indexed
2024-03-27T07:13:50.226Z
lexile_score
-1
literary_form
Fiction
literary_form_full
Fiction
local_callnumber_catalog
GURGANUS
owning_library_catalog
Wake County Public Libraries
owning_location_catalog
Middle Creek Community
North Regional
Oberlin Regional
primary_isbn
9780375727634
publishDate
2002
2010
publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Vintage Contemporaries
recordtype
grouped_work
subject_facet
United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
title_display
The practical heart : four novellas
title_full
The Practical Heart Four Novellas
The practical heart : four novellas / Allan Gurganus
title_short
The practical heart
title_sub
four novellas
topic_facet
Fiction
Literature
Social life and customs

Solr Details Tables

item_details

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ils:4308055811922North Regional - Adult FictionGURGANUS1falsefalseOn ShelfNOR
ils:4308056232595Oberlin Regional - Adult FictionGURGANUS1falsefalseOn ShelfOBR
overdrive:582822bf-caaf-4988-be89-78fd13213157-1Online OverDrive CollectionOnline OverDriveeBookeBook2falsetrueOverDriveAvailable Online

record_details

Bib IdFormatFormat CategoryEditionLanguagePublisherPublication DatePhysical DescriptionAbridged
ils:430805BookBooksFirst Vintage Contemporaries editionEnglishVintage Contemporaries2002[xi], 322 pages ; 21 cm
overdrive:582822bf-caaf-4988-be89-78fd13213157eBookeBookEnglishKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group2010

scoping_details_catalog

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ils:4308056232596On ShelfOn Shelffalsetruetruefalsefalsetrue
ils:4308055811922On ShelfOn Shelffalsetruetruefalsefalsetrue
ils:4308056232595On ShelfOn Shelffalsetruetruefalsefalsetrue
overdrive:582822bf-caaf-4988-be89-78fd13213157-1Available OnlineAvailable Onlinefalsetruetruefalsefalsefalse