What Burns, Dale Peck
What Burns, Dale Peck
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What Burns

Author: Dale Peck

Narrator: Curt Bonnem, Chelsea Stephens

Unabridged: 5 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/05/2019


Synopsis

The first collection of short fiction from Lambda Award–winning novelist Dale Peck spans twenty-five years of writing, including two O. Henry Award winners and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize.

The stories in What Burns examine the extremes of desire against a backdrop of family, class, and mortality.

In "Bliss," a young man befriends the convicted felon who murdered his mother when he was only a child. In "Not Even Camping Is Like Camping Anymore," a teenage boy fends off the advances of a five-year-old his mother babysits. And in "Dues," a man discovers that everything he owns is borrowed from someone else—including his time on earth.

Walking the tightrope between tenderness and violence that has defined Peck's work since the publication of his first novel, Martin and John, through his most recent, Night Soil, What Burns reveals Peck's mastery of the short form.

About Dale Peck

Dale Peck is the author of fourteen books in a variety of genres, including Visions and Revisions, Martin and John, Hatchet Jobs, and Sprout. His fiction and criticism have appeared in dozens of publications, and have earned him two O. Henry Awards, a Pushcart Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. He lives in New York City, where he has taught in the New School's Graduate Writing Program since 1999.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jee

Content warning: child molestation and violent rape. This review contains spoilers. Reading Dale Peck’s story collection What Burns, I do not find an irreverent provocateur, didactic narcissist, or campy satirist, as other readers have claimed to find. Instead, I think I see the outline of a moralist......more

Goodreads review by Alan M

I first encountered Dale Peck's work in the late 1990s, and so was very much looking forward to this, his first collection of short stories from various points over the last 25 years or so. As with much of Peck's prose, this is a challenging, provocative collection, with a focus on queer relationship......more

Goodreads review by Blake

I have a love/hate relationship with the work of Dale Peck. I think he's a skilled writer yet his stories have never fully engaged me and his characters fail to move me. This book of short stories is no exception. As with most of his work, these pieces serve up palpable doses of the author's customa......more

Goodreads review by Sabs

I did this one as an audiobook, and the short year interstitials between longer stories really threw me off. Some of these stories were great, but like many short story anthologies, I think you really do the writer a disservice by reading them all at once. They all sort of blend together and the wea......more