The Whole World at Once: Stories
240 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paperback
Release Date:01 May 2017
ISBN:9781943665570
The Whole World at Once is a collection of intense stories about the experience of loss. A soldier returns home from multiple tours only to begin planting landmines in the field behind his house; kids chase a ghost story up country roads only to become one themselves; one girl copes with the anniversary of her sister’s disappearance during the agricultural fair, while another girl searches for understanding after seeing the picture of a small boy washed onto a beach.
Dark, strange beauties, all of the stories in The Whole World at Once follow the lives of people grappling with what it means to live in a world with death.
Dark, strange beauties, all of the stories in The Whole World at Once follow the lives of people grappling with what it means to live in a world with death.
Erin Pringle’s stories leave you no choice. They sing so gorgeously, break your heart so perfectly, that you’re forced to revise your understanding of loss, luck, and love.’
Tom Noyes, author of Come by Here: A Novella and Stories
In these restless and relentless fictions, the unstoppable storyteller Erin Pringle is at it again. ‘It’ being the most American of dramas—the endless conflict between mobility and stability. In these patently patient, transparently transparent, overly understated stories, the characters constantly fidget and fret in low frequency worries all the while their vital signs are sighing and simmering. These are pristine and persistent visions of hobble-hearted people going nowhere fast. Her writing, word after word, will stop you in your tracks, will ease you over the edgiest of edges. Don’t blink!
—Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Four for a Quarter
There’s no writer working today who excites me more than Erin Pringle. Her stories stretch like planks off a cliff, past solid ground, offering breath-stealing views of grief, love, and mystery. I love this collection.’
— Owen Egerton, author of The Book of Harold and writer and director of the thriller Follow
A strikingly original collection. This book is poetic, yet has a deep sense of storytelling.’
Laura Long, author of Out of Peel Tree and editor of Eyes Burning at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia
Erin Pringle-Toungate is the author of The Floating Order. Her work has been selected as a Best American Notable Non-Required Reading, shortlisted for the Charles Pick Fellowship, and a finalist for contests such as the Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest and the Kore Press Short Fiction Award. She was awarded a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship, which she used to write and revise many of these stories. Learn more at erinpringle.com.
