Rough Translations

Stories

Title Details

Pages: 144

Trim size: 5.500in x 8.500in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 11/10/2004

ISBN: 9-780-8203-2370-1

List Price: $22.95

Rough Translations

Stories

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  • Description
  • Reviews
  • Awards

Molly Giles's engaging collection of stories was the winner not only of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction but also of the 1985 San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association (BABRA) Award for Fiction and the 1986 Boston Globe Fiction Award. Many of the stories in Rough Translations have been anthologized and adapted for radio performance.

A master of the complexities of language, Molly Giles writes of the missed connections in life and of the rough translations that we employ when we try to convey, through words and gestures, what we are thinking and what we want from our loved ones.

The title of Molly Giles's first collection of short fiction reflects her attempt to capture in layered phrases and fresh, sharp dialogue the timely theme of human connections gone bad, broken, or missed altogether.

New York Times Book Review

Her impeccable timing and energetic prose sacrifice grandstanding in favor of exploration and direct statement, often tempered with a great, hushed humor.

San Francisco Chronicle

Giles's stories are tiny gems, carved from real American life, precise and identifiable.

Houston Post

A current as irresistible as the tide flows through and unifies these stories. . . . [They] carry you with wit and compassion into corners of the mind and heart that most writers neglect to enter.

Publishers Weekly

Were it to stand by itself without a prize to commend it, this volume of short stories would demand attention. The twelve stories, while differing widely in style and tone, all attempt to illuminate the intimate aspects of our lives . . . Rough Translations joins the ranks of excellent short story collections that have appeared so far this year, such as Amy Hempel's Reasons to Live

Choice

Winner

Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, Bay Area Book Reviewers Association

Winner

Boston Globe Literary Press Award, Boston Globe

About the Author/Editor

MOLLY GILES is a lecturer in the creative writing department at San Francisco State University. Her stories have appeared in Playgirl, Redbook, North American Review, New England Review, and Ascent, among other publications. She lives in Woodacre, California, with her three daughters.