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The Member-Guest

A moving, blackly funny novel in stories set during a small-time middle-American country club's annual Member-Guest Golf Tournament, The Member-Guest evokes a place and its inhabitants with the sort of eerie brilliance noy seen in American fiction since Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. "Home Course Advantage' is that rare thing, a real story...and Clint McCown is a graceful storytefler.", said Louise Erdrich, on presenting the 1991 American Fiction Award. The Member-Guest is a tour-de-force. In a series of intimately interconnected short stories, two of them American Fiction Award-winners, it brings to delightful life a middle-American community, with all its class frustrations, marriages gone bad, dreams tumed sour...and hopes. With a balance of tenderness and razor-sharp wit, Clint McCown assembles a rich gallery of losers, cast-offs, and grotesques-all in one way or another guests straining to be members, with varying degrees of success. At times heartrending, at times deliciously perverse, The Member-Guest stares into the dark maw of empty suburban vacuity and finds humor in what it sees there. And beauty, and real sadness. It marks the debut of a major voice in American fiction.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 242
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780385476553
  • Release date
  • 1995