The dead and the missing exert a field that doesn’t dissipate. Gestures and phrases have half-lives. Silences are deserted plazas, dusty, throttled by wind where the last goat starves. Omissions are a dereliction.
His mother stands on a sandbank. Kelp stretches out like a henna crocodile. She reaches inside the seaweed and pulls out amber dragon fangs. For you, Tommy. Now I can come home.
The most spectacular and irredeemable crimes have no official designation, no official code number or prison sentence. They’re boulders in the Genesee where little girls drown. They’ll be here when you and your loves and the concept of love itself is gone and there’s no statute of limitation.
About the Author
Hailed as one of America’s foremost writers of short fiction, KATE BRAVERMAN has been included in nearly every preeminent story collection, including Ben Marcus’ New American Short Stories, Tobias Wolff’s The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Best American, Carver, The Paris Review, and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. She is the author of many books including the groundbreaking novel Lithium for Medea, which caught the attention of Joan Didion, Janet Fitch, Rick Moody, Greil Marcus, and others, identifying Braverman as a remarkable literary voice in American letters.
Praise for Kate Braverman’s
A Good Day for Seppuku
“Kate Braverman is a writer of astonishing versatility and lyricism. Her stories are brilliantly rendered, painfully intimate portraits of individuals who come alive on the page as if illuminated by strobe lighting. With remarkable precision she tracks the restless motions of a mind searching for its reflection in the world—a continuous interrogation of the self that sweeps us along with it, as in a mysterious adventure.”
“This extraordinary collection from Braverman features unforgettable stories of women on the edge, children overlooked, and men at the ends of their ropes…. Her details are so vivid that they feel like memories… Without glorifying or reveling in suffering, Braverman reveals the inner lives of her disparate cast of characters.”
“Kate Braverman is an original. Reading her is like hitching a ride on a runaway train, always dangerous, always thrilling, always a knockout. Seppuku is all that and more.”
“Braverman is the godmother of literary bad girls and a connoisseur of the shattered beauty glittering in the wreckage of her characters’ lives. A Good Day for Seppuku celebrates the Braverman vision, and frames her legacy.”
“There is… a captivating undertone of dark humor to Braverman’s stories, whether it comes through description, interior narrative, or sharply bandied dialogue.”
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Kate Braverman
“What the Lilies Know” (published as “The Woman Who Sold Communion” in McSweeney’s, 2005 and Best of McSweeney’s, 2006.)
“Skinny Broads with Wigs” (published as “Mrs. Jordan’s Summer Vacation,” “Editors Choice” Carver Award, Carve Magazine, Volume 5, 2005)
“Feeding in a Famine” (published by Connotation Press online, June 2015)
“Cocktail Hour” (published in Mississippi Review, Volume 33 #1 & 2, winner of the Mississippi Review Prize)
“Women of the Ports” (published as “The Neutral Zone” in San Francisco Noir, Akashic Books, 2005)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Braverman, Kate, author.
Title: A good day for seppuku : stories / Kate Braverman.
Description: San Francisco : City Lights Publishers, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017043863 (print) | LCCN 2017046533 (ebook) | ISBN 9780872867222 (ebook) | ISBN 9780872867215 (softcover)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Short Stories (single author). | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Family Life.
Classification: LCC PS3552.R3555 (ebook) | LCC PS3552.R3555 A6 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043863
City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133