Honeydew

The new story collection from the author of National Book Critics Circle Award winner and Sunday Times Fiction Book of the Year, Binocular Vision

Over the last few decades, Edith Pearlman has staked her claim as one of the great practitioners of the short story. Her understanding and skill have earned her comparisons to Anton Chekhov, John Updike and Alice Munro. Her latest work, gathered in this stunning collection of twenty new stories, is an occasion for celebration.

The stories in Honeydew are unmistakably by Pearlman; whole lives in ten pages. They are minutely observant of people, of their foibles and failings, but also of their moments of kindness and truth. Whether the characters are Somalian women who’ve suffered circumcision, a special child with pentachromatic vision or a staid professor of Latin unsettled by a random invitation to lecture on the mystery of life and death, Pearlman knows each of them intimately and reveals them with generosity.

We almost overlooked Edith Pearlman. Honeydew confirms how lucky we were that we didn’t.

‘A spectacular literary revelation’ Sunday Times

‘An unsung master’ The Times

‘The equal of Updike or Munro’ Independent

Praise for Binocular Vision:

‘Gold medal class . . . seems beyond compare . . . The traditional literary system has worked, though grievously slowly, in giving a genius of the short story her due’Guardian

‘[Pearlman's stories are] meticulously made, miraculously precise, and so fully populated that you marvel one mind could invent so many distinct human beings from scratch’ Financial Times

‘A new literary star has arrived’ Sunday Times