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MISS JANE

Brad Watson

Inspired by the true story of his own great-aunt, Watson explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that would stand in the way of the central “uses” for a woman in that time and place—namely, sex and marriage. Set in Mississippi in the early 1900's, this is a quiet and contemplative novel written by "a writer of profound emotional depths" (New York Times Book Review). Long-listed for the NBA 2016.
Dr Thompson, the country doctor, adopts Jane and guides her. Jane comes to love the hard tactile labor of farm life and wants to find the good in everything. Her parents barely get by, her sister has left as soo as she could. But Jane lived her life with grace and strength.

From the highly erotic world of nature around her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave her, the world of Miss Jane Chisolm is anything but barren. Free to satisfy only herself, she mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.

Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, "Last Days of the Dog-Men", Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South in works as melancholy, witty, strange, and ovely as any in America.

Brad Watson teaches creative writing at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. His first collection, Last Days of the Dog-Men, won the Sue Kauffman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts & Letters; his first novel, The Heaven of Mercury, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and his Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
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Published 2016-07-11 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

Exquisitely written. Miss Jane is an artistic triumph, a novel that will linger inside you as long as your own memories do. Brad Watson‘s gifts are immense.

Beautffiilly wrftten, great-hearted... takes its readers beyond the usual levels of a novel‘s power and into the sublime.

Miss Jane covers a quiet, often solitary lifetime enriched by the unfettered outdoors, the tough routine of farm life, and the ache of unconsummated love. Watson's characters are mentally desterous in spite of their physical hardship. The book plays on the tongue like an oyster - first salty, then cold - before slipping away to be consumed and digested.

A well-written portrait of a person whose rich inner life outstrips the limits of her body.

Affecting, nuanced. . . .The story of Jane‘s lonely, lovely life is more powerful because of its emotional reserve.

The complexity and drama of Watson's gorgeous work here is life's as well: sometimes physical realities expand us, sometimes trap; sometimes heroism lies in combating our helplessness, somtimes in accepting it. A writer of profound emotional depths, Watson does not lie to his reader, so neither does his Janes.

Brad Watson deserves applause. . . . lt was a pleasure to ride the tide of his artful and efficient sentences through this unusual tale.

UK: Picador, Beijing United Creadion Culture Media Co. (Chinese simplified); Atlas Contact (Dutch); Editions Grasset et Fasquelle (French); Mehta Publishing House (Marathi); Epsilon Yayincilik (Turkish)