Severance: Stories
by Robert Olen Butler
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert Olen ButlerEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-10
ISBN: 0811856143
Number of pages: 264
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Book Reviews of Severance: Stories
Book Review: Butler is a creative genius.
Summary: 4 Stars
Robert Olen Butler has the creativity and ingenuity very few people can match. Severance is one of his many story collections that make us see the world in a different way. All 60 stories take place after a decapitation from the point of view of the severed head (thus the title) and after reading, we begin to think in broken fragments because that's how potent his writing is. You will not read another book like this, unless you buy Intercourses or another from Butler, and it is worth perusing through a few times, enjoying the fragment of beauty within the pages.
Summary of Severance: Stories
The human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one-half minutes after decapitation. In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute. Inspired by the intersection of these two seemingly unrelated concepts, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler wrote sixty-two stories, each exactly 240 words in length, capturing the flow of thoughts and feelings that go through a person's mind after their head has been severed. The characters are both real and imagined Medusa (beheaded by Perseus, 2000 BC), Anne Boleyn (beheaded at the behest of Henry VIII, 1536), a chicken (beheaded for Sunday dinner, Alabama, 1958), and the author (decapitated, on the job, 2008). Told with the intensity of a poet and the wit of a great storyteller, these final thoughts illuminate and crystallize more about the characters' own lives and the worlds they inhabit than many writers manage to convey in full-length biographies or novels. The stories, which have appeared in literary magazines across the country, are a delightful and intriguing creative feat from one of today's most inventive writers.Contemporary Books
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