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The Practical Heart by Allan Gurganus
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The Practical Heart

Four Novellas

Four Novellas

Four Novellas

By Allan Gurganus

By Allan Gurganus

By Allan Gurganus

By Allan Gurganus

By Allan Gurganus
Read by Dan Cashman

By Allan Gurganus
Read by Dan Cashman

Best Seller

Part of Vintage Contemporaries

Part of Vintage Contemporaries

Paperback $22.00

Aug 27, 2002 | ISBN 9780375727634

Ebook $4.99

Sep 01, 2010 | ISBN 9780307764140

Audiobook Download $25.00

Aug 27, 2003 | 931 Minutes

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    The Practical Heart by Allan Gurganus
    Paperback $22.00
    Aug 27, 2002 | ISBN 9780375727634

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    • $22.00

      Aug 27, 2002 | ISBN 9780375727634

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    • Sep 01, 2010 | ISBN 9780307764140

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    • Aug 27, 2003 | ISBN 9781415911587

      931 Minutes

      Buy from Other Retailers:

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    About The Practical Heart

    In his fictional Falls, North Carolina–a watchful zone of stifling mores–Allan Gurganus’s fond and comical characters risk everything to protect their improbable hopes from prejudice, poverty, betrayal. Seeking warmth and true connection, they shield themselves and loved ones while creating a rarely-glimpsed world of valor, minor grandeur, side-street heroics.

    Muriel Fraser, a poor Scottish-born spinster, is the subject of a John Singer Sargent portrait in the imagination of her devoted grand-nephew. Tad Worth, a young man dying of AIDS, finds ways to restore vitality to old friends and 18th-century houses. Overnight, one pillar of the community, accused of child molesting, becomes the village pariah. And Clyde Delman, ugliest if kindest man in Falls, finds the love of his eight-year-old son jeopardized when troubling family secrets arise. In each of these splendid complex tales, Allan Gurganus wrings truths–sometimes bruising, ofttimes warming–from human hearts as immense as they are local.

    About The Practical Heart

    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.

    About The Practical Heart

    In his fictional Falls, North Carolina–a watchful zone of stifling mores–Allan Gurganus’s fond and comical characters risk everything to protect their improbable hopes from prejudice, poverty, betrayal. Seeking warmth and true connection, they shield themselves and loved ones while creating a rarely-glimpsed world of valor, minor grandeur, side-street heroics.

    Muriel Fraser, a poor Scottish-born spinster, is the subject of a John Singer Sargent portrait in the imagination of her devoted grand-nephew. Tad Worth, a young man dying of AIDS, finds ways to restore vitality to old friends and 18th-century houses. Overnight, one pillar of the community, accused of child molesting, becomes the village pariah. And Clyde Delman, ugliest if kindest man in Falls, finds the love of his eight-year-old son jeopardized when troubling family secrets arise. In each of these splendid complex tales, Allan Gurganus wrings truths–sometimes bruising, ofttimes warming–from human hearts as immense as they are local.

    Read An Excerpt

    Read An Excerpt

    Read An Excerpt

    Also by Allan Gurganus

    Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
    White People
    Plays Well with Others
    See all books by Allan Gurganus

    About Allan Gurganus

    Allan Gurganus is a recipient  of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Book Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a finalist of the PEN/Faulkner Award. Adaptations of his fiction have earned four… More about Allan Gurganus

    About Allan Gurganus

    Allan Gurganus is a recipient  of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Book Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a finalist of the PEN/Faulkner Award. Adaptations of his fiction have earned four… More about Allan Gurganus

    About Allan Gurganus

    Allan Gurganus is a recipient  of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Book Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a finalist of the PEN/Faulkner Award. Adaptations of his fiction have earned four… More about Allan Gurganus

    Product Details

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Paperback | $22.00
    Published by Vintage
    Aug 27, 2002 | 336 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780375727634

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Ebook | $4.99
    Published by Vintage
    Sep 01, 2010 | 336 Pages | ISBN 9780307764140

    Category: Short Stories | Audiobooks

    Audiobook Download | $25.00
    Published by Random House Audio
    Aug 27, 2003 | 931 Minutes | ISBN 9781415911587

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    Praise

    “Gurganus is an old-fashioned yarn spinner. . . . [The Practical Heart] reanimates all those familiar truths about art’s power to transform and redeem.” –The New York Times

    “As intriguing as it is deadly funny. . . . An entertaining, disturbing, and inspiring book . . . [from] one of our greatest living raconteurs.” –The Atlantic Monthly

    “Gurganus’s commitment to the importance of suffering and the power of art to redeem it, so like Henry James’, blows through [these stories] like a cold wind of truth.” –Newsday

    “There is no other American writer working from his recipe, and nobody dishing it out with such full-throated gusto.” –The Washington Post

    Awards

    Lambda Literary Award WINNER 2001

    Author Essay

    Here on his author’s desktop, Allan Gurganus presents the tale of the creation of the four novellas that comprise The Practical Heart, drawn entirely by his own hand.

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