Lynne Barrett

Lynne Barrett’s Magpies is a collection of eight elegant and subtle stories. In Links a “luddite” writer gets a job at a dot.com run by 28 year-old A.D.D. phenoms after the magazine where she worked for eight years folds. The contrast between her steady and seemingly old-fashioned values and those of her employers is at the heart of the story. A gossip columnist sees strange physical results from her years of spewing dreck in the fantasy-infused Gossip and Toad. In Texaco on Biscayne a woman calls her ex-boyfriend in desperation to help her change a flat in a bad neighborhood, altering the course of their lives. A failing businessman plots his own fake death (a Florida pastime) in When, He Wondered, but it doesn’t turn out as planned for anyone after his wife and friend get involved.

Three stories feature a couple named Carlos and Jenny living in South Florida. In One Hippopotamus they have just met and Jenny isn’t sure she can trust him, even as she finds herself falling in love. In Gift Wrap, the now-married parents entertain Jenny’s family for Christmas not long after her mother dies and she and her sister tangle over her traditional lebkuchen recipe. Cave of the Winds has them as part of a group preparing for a hurricane season in which there are no hurricanes – this time.

Magpies won the 2011 Florida Book Award Gold Medal for General Fiction.… (més)