How Strange a Season, Megan Mayhew Bergman
How Strange a Season, Megan Mayhew Bergman
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How Strange a Season
Fiction

Author: Megan Mayhew Bergman

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Unabridged: 8 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/29/2022


Synopsis

“Dazzling.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“Richly satisfying.” —The Wall Street Journal
“These are stories you want to live in…a collection perfectly suited for our moment.” —Booklist (starred review)

A collection of stories “so beautifully crafted they feel like tiny worlds unto themselves” (Los Angeles Times) about women experiencing all life’s beauty and challenges, from award-winning writer Megan Mayhew Bergman.

A recently separated woman fills a huge terrarium with rare flowers to establish control over a small world and attempt to heal her broken heart. A competitive swimmer negotiates over which days she will fulfill her wifely duties, and which days she will keep for herself. A peach farmer wonders if her orchard will survive a drought. And generations of a family in South Carolina struggle with fidelity and their cruel past, some clinging to old ways and others painfully carving new paths.

In this “closely observed” (The New Yorker) collection, Megan Mayhew Bergman portrays women who wrestle with problematic inheritances: a modern glass house on a treacherous California cliff, a water-starved ranch, and an abandoned plantation on a river near Charleston. “Bergman’s stories are so emotionally rich that they serve as portals into distinct interior worlds...this collection is distinct and vivid...As singular as it is atmospheric” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

About Megan Mayhew Bergman

Megan Mayhew Bergman is the author of Almost Famous Women and Birds of a Lesser Paradise. Her short fiction has appeared in two volumes of The Best American Short Stories and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She has written columns on climate change and the natural world for The Guardian and The Paris Review. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The New YorkerTin HousePloughsharesOxford AmericanOrion, and elsewhere. She teaches literature and environmental writing at Middlebury College, where she also serves as director of the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She lives on a small farm in Vermont.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sunny on February 12, 2023

4.5 Parent/child relationships, multigenerational family lines, grandparents and aging, the ties of womanhood, subtle queerness, the legacy of the American south, climate apocalypse, compelling characters and love and very good storytelling with strong writing!! The short story form is not dead!!......more

Goodreads review by Lauren on February 21, 2023

A surprisingly enlightining collection of short stories. This book explores the social constraints of women, and how that plays into who they are and how they perceive themselves. ......more

Goodreads review by Bob on June 28, 2022

3.5 stars If you’re suffering from a bad relationship or breakup and want some literary companionship (though not uplift), Megan Mayhew Bergman’s How Strange a Season is just for you. In this collection of stories, plus a novella, Bergman focuses on women (and a man and two children in the novella) w......more

Goodreads review by Lolly K Dandeneau on March 22, 2022

via my blog: [URL not allowed] “𝑨 𝒍𝒂𝒅𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆!” 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒚𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌. “𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒊𝒕 𝒅𝒐 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒎𝒆?” This collection of stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman is about what we drag around, our broken love lives, our damaged families, our history. It’s abo......more

Goodreads review by Patti on March 28, 2022

Fearless character full of compassion,I could not put it down! Thus is a must read .......more