The beloved author at her storytelling best: four wonderful novellas of
Americans abroad and Europeans in America.
In these absorbing and exquisitely made novellas of relationships at
home and abroad, both historical and contemporary, we meet the ferocious
Simone Weil during her final days as a transplant to New York City; a
vulnerable American grad student who escapes to Italy after her first,
compromising love affair; the charming Irish liar of the title novella,
who gets more out of life than most of us; and Thomas Mann, opening the
heart of a high-school kid in America. These stories dazzle on the
surface, with beautifully rendered settings and vistas, and dig deep
psychologically. At every turn Gordon reveals in her characters'
interactions those crucial flashes of understanding that change lives
forever. So richly developed it is hard to believe they fit into
novella-sized packages, these tales carry us away both as individual
stories and as a larger, book-length experience of Gordon's mastery and
human sympathy.