The Collected Stories

The definitive collection of short fiction from a writer “who has single-handedly revitalized the short story” (Los Angeles Times).
“If anyone wrote eloquently and magnificently about affairs of the heart, it was Laurie Colwin” (San Francisco Chronicle). In this stunning volume, which gathers together her three brilliant story collections, the beloved author of Home Cooking explores the mysteries of life and love with her signature blend of empathy, wisdom, and wit.
Passion and Affect: From two ornithologists who find their own mating habits to be just as inscrutable as those of their avian subjects to a lonely husband whose search for exotic hobbies leads him to television, junk food, and a young woman with Technicolor green hair, the heroes and heroines of Colwin’s debut story collection are clever, naïve, brave, delicate, and fickle. In other words, they are profoundly human, and their precisely observed, warmly intelligent stories capture nothing less than what it means to be alive in the modern world.
The Lone Pilgrim: In the title story of this elegant and insightful collection, a book illustrator meets the man of her dreams and struggles to say goodbye to her old self. “A Mythological Subject” is the tale of an adulterous affair that arrives unexpected and unwanted, like a natural disaster, but is no mistake. “A Girl Skating” is a delicate and haunting portrait of the unbridgeable divide between life and art, poetry and nature. “One reads with fascination the steps by which lovers in one story after another stumble upon their forthright declarations” (The New York Times Book Review).
Another Marvelous Thing: These “witty, literate, and intelligent” linked stories are told from the alternating perspectives of two adulterous lovers (The New York Times Book Review). Josephine “Billy” Delielle and Francis Clemens are economists married to other people, but the similarities end there. He is fastidious; she is a slob. He delights in good food and fine wine; her refrigerator is always empty. He is old and sentimental; she is young and tough minded. Charting their electrifying affair from beginning to end, this exquisite story collection tackles the thorniest of subjects with honesty, grace, and humor.