The Shape of a Man: A Novella and Five Stories

THE SHAPE OF A MAN: A NOVELLA AND FIVE STORIES is storytelling in the grand Southern tradition of Robert Penn Warren, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor. In the title novella a young boy seeks to emulate the courage of his father as the two of them attempt to unravel the mystery of a ghastly crime against a simpleton fieldhand in 1950's rural South Carolina. In "Laissez Faire Redux" a traditional South Carolinian and his liberal brother-in-law argue over the flying of the Confederate flag. "Another Woman's Ring" depicts a late-life romance, while in "Midnight" a middle-aged housewife is tempted to passion by a mysterious stranger. "The Liberation of Marian K." takes place in fashionable Manhattan: a man comes to admire an eccentric socialite he once despised. "Family Portrait" partakes of the old Russian literary tradition, exemplified by Tolstoy and Turgenev, of depicting a life in miniature: a woman risks madness and ridicule to preserve the heroic memory of her dead son.