Float Up, Sing Down

Stories

Bloomsbury presents Float Up, Sing Down by Laird Hunt, read by Holly Palance.

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

Laird Hunt’s “revelatory (NYT)” story collection capturing one summer’s day in the Indiana community where the beloved National Book Award Finalist Zorrie bloomed.

Candy Wilson has forgotten to buy the paprika. Turner Davis needs to get his zinnias in. Della Dorner told her mother she was going to the Galaxy Swirl, but that's not where she's really headed on her new Schwinn five-speed.

Float Up, Sing Down is the story of a single day. But in that day, how much teeming life! The residents of this rural town have their routines, their preferences, their joys, grudges, and regrets. Gossip is paramount. Lives are entwined. Retired sheriffs climb corn bins and muse on lost love, French teachers throw firecrackers out of barn windows, and teenagers borrow motorcycles to ride the back roads.

Each of the fourteen stories of Float Up, Sing Down follows one character’s day in the life in one of Hunt’s most beloved and enduring landscapes. In the tradition of Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Elizabeth Strout, and Edward P. Jones, this is a symphony of souls, a masterful portrait of both loneliness and community by one of our great limners of American experience.

©2024 Laird Hunt (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Reseñas de la Crítica

'What a delight to spend a day with the inhabitants of Bright Creek, their longings and lusts, their memories. Laird Hunt writes so brilliantly about the quotidian—why a woman would leave a tin of paprika on a gravestone; why a boy would be devoted to this headband—and in doing so, he reveals so much else. Float Up, Sing Down is a shimmering, magical book.' (Margot Livesey, author of THE BOY IN THE FIELD)

'The stories in Float Up, Sing Down are funny and heart-wrecking, often in the same sentence. This is a glorious collection.' (Hilma Wolitzer, author of TODAY A WOMAN WENT MAD IN THE SUPERMARKET)