Family Dancing: Stories - Softcover

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award

"Brilliantly written." --"San Francisco Chronicle"

"Astonishing--funny, eloquent, and wise." --"New York Times"

"A most impressive entrance into contemporary fiction." --"Associated Press"

Brilliantly written. "San Francisco Chronicle"

Astonishing--funny, eloquent, and wise. "New York Times"

A most impressive entrance into contemporary fiction. "Associated Press""

"Brilliantly written." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Astonishing--funny, eloquent, and wise." --New York Times

"A most impressive entrance into contemporary fiction." --Associated Press

Thirty years ago, David Leavitt first appeared on the literary scene with a gutsy story collection that stunned readers and reviewers. Just twenty-three, he was hailed as a prodigy of sorts: "remarkably gifted" (TheWashington Post), with "a genius for empathy" (The New York Times Book Review) and "a knowledge of others' lives . . . that a writer twice his age might envy" (USA Today). "Regardless of age," wrote theNew York Times, "few writers so effortlessly achieve the sense of maturity and earned compassion so evident in these pages."

In "Territory," a well-intentioned, liberal mother, presiding over her local Parents of Lesbians and Gays chapter, finds her acceptance of her son's sexuality shaken when he arrives home with a lover. In the title story, a family extended through divorce and remarriage dances together at the end of a summer party--in the recognition that they are still bound by the very forces that split them apart. Tender and funny, these stories reveal the intricacies and subtleties of the dances in which we all engage.