Rebecca Barry—Hopeful and Well-Imagined

You might say Rebecca Barry is an expert on the novel-in-stories. Her own novel-in-stories, Later, at the Bar, was praised by everyone from People to Vanity Fair and was even selected as New York Times notable book. Here’s what Rebecca Barry had to say about Tracks: A Novel in Stories.

“A terrific use of the novel-in-stories as form, Eric D. Goodman’s Tracks does what so many of us wish we could do in our travels: peer beneath the surfaces of the lives that intersect ours, if only for a moment. As his narrative winds from car to car, Goodman explores the ways our urge to isolate ourselves is often in direct competition with the way we long to connect, as well as the many layers of love lost and found we carry with us wherever we go. Hopeful and well-imagined, Tracks skillfully captures what makes rail travel so compelling: that while cars or planes might be about traveling from place to place, the train is a place.”

It’s happy hour now: take a look at two novels-in-stories that are sure to make you long to go where everybody knows your name, whether it’s the neighborhood bar or the train’s lounge car.

Later, at the Bar

http://www.rebeccabarry.net/

Tracks: A Novel in Stories

www.TracksNovel.com

Harlin and Prewitt, at the Bar on the Train

As many authors will tell you, sometimes a character is just asking to be treated badly. Hurt. Or even killed.

Recently I had this discussion with acclaimed author Rebecca Barry. Rebecca is the author of Later, at the Bar—a collection of linked stories selected as a New York Times Notable Book and praised everywhere from People to Vanity Fair. Reviewers from Bookslut to Chicago Sun Times praised Later, at the Bar.

I mentioned to Rebecca that I really liked one of her recurring characters, Harlin. Things don’t go well for Harlin, but as you read, you understand that it’s the only way they can go for a person like him. Sometimes your characters demand a particular treatment—be it love, loss, death, or redemption. Readers sometimes imagine that authors are engineers when in reality it is oftentimes our characters who are in control of what happens.

After reading Tracks, Rebecca said, “I felt the same way about Prewitt as you did about Harlin.” But no matter how you feel about a character, what must be, must be. “Sometimes it's just what the book demands.”

See what the New York Times had to say about Rebecca’s novel in stories.

www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/books/review/Trussoni.t.html

Find out what happens to Harlin in Later, at the Bar.

http://www.rebeccabarry.net/

Find out what happens to Prewitt in Tracks.

www.TracksNovel.com