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| Linda Strand Koutsky © Coffee House Press |
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Glory Goes and Gets Some
by Emily Carter
Coffeehouse Press, 2000
(From the publisher) How is a woman in her 30s, HIV-positive, and fresh out of rehab, supposed to find love and work in contemporary urban America, steering clear of self-pity and doctrinaire "happy-talk"? This linked short story collection shows how Glory goes and gets some.
Emily Carter's debut traces Glory's stay in Minnesota's recovery community, from halfway houses in blighted urban neighborhoods to well-funded treatment centers in bucolic pastures. From her addictions to heroin and alcohol in New York through her unlikely, tenuous, yet rewarding alliances with the full range of treatment mavens in the midwest, Glory gives us an uncensored and irreverent account of her experiences in twelve-step recovery—a process that, for all its faults, ultimately works for her.
That first six months, there were an awful lot of people I met who talked the talk, all the time. Their faces seemed to glow, and they'd go on about so-and-so 'getting it,' 'getting' the program, having that much-touted aura of serenity about them. It was my experience that such persons usually relapsed and stole their roommate's stereo equipment, or charged five thousand dollars worth of lingerie at Neiman Marcus.
Glory Goes and Gets Some is a streetwise and sardonic look at sex, HIV, addiction, and recovery.
About the author
(From the publisher) Emily Carter's work has received many awards and fellowships, including the Loft/McKnight Award, a Bush Grant, and a National Magazine Award. Her writing has appeared in Story, Gathering of the Tribes, Between C & D, Artforum, Open City, Great River Review, and Poz, for which she was the cover subject of the 1998 summer fiction issue. Glory Goes and Gets Some features stories that were originally published in The New Yorker, and the title story was selected by Garrison Keillor for Best American Short Stories 1998. Emily Carter lives in Minneapolis.
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