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The Member-Guestby Mccown, Clint
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Book DescriptionDoubleday. Hardcover. 0385476558 K81___USED ITEM___MAY HAVE LIBRARY MARKINGS___FAST SHIPPING . Good. Book summaryA series of interlinked stories centered around a member-guest country club tournament. While each story stands on its own, together they offer up a portrait of an entire community. "Mule Collector" received an American Fiction Award.Media Reviews"The novel is constructed in 10 short stories, skillfully darting in and out of the minds of the participants; displaying their sometimes-skewed perceptions and exposing a reality that they are often hard-pressed to perceive." -- Jeff Mitchell, Indianapolis Star "Don't look for gentlemanly vignettes in Clint McCown's nicely sardonic collection of interlinked stories....Every now and then, Mr. McCown slides in a reverent P.G.A.-approved platitude, but his sympathies lie more with some of the disgruntled characters who never set foot on the fairways." -- Alida Becker, New York Times Book Review "McCown's stories win prizes, and his talent is very much on display here. The writing is spare, restrained, evocative of the deep isolation felt by nearly all of the characters, most of whom bounce off each other in the vain hope of connecting and doing something about the yawning emptiness of their lives." -- Warren Goldstein, Washington Post Book World Publisher NotesThe annual Member-Guest Golf Tournament is at hand, the year's social highwater mark for the seedy middle-American country club that lies at the center of THE MEMBER-GUEST. Hope fills the air and everyone smells it, including Rod, the burned-out club pro who only needs one more shot at the tour; Glen L., the club's senile mule-collecting founder; Brenda, the religion-scarred torch singer with a weakness for dangerous men; and Bev, the adulterous snack-bar manager who can't quite wake up to the fact that she's married to a man whose sole source of income is the sale of stolen golf carts. Theirs is a world of guests trying feverishly to be members, despite the fact that the gap between their dreams and their lives has become so vast that hope has begun to seem ridiculous; a world of people desperate to become more human, or at least to find out what that word means. It is a world brought to life with a sort of eerie, knife-edged brilliance not found in American fiction since Sherwood Anderson's WINESBURG, OHIO. Other Recommended Books
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