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Sweet and Low

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Sweet and Low

By: Nick White
Narrated by: Michael Crouch
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About this listen

Named one of the most anticipated books of summer 2018 by O Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, New York Post, The Millions, Southern Living, Popsugar, The Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Review of Books

Praised by the Washington Post as "Tennessee Williams...transposed to the twenty-first-century South", Nick White returns with a stunning short-story collection that tackles issues of masculinity, identity, and place, with a sharp eye for social commentary and a singular handling of character.

At first glance, the stories in Sweet and Low seem grounded in the everyday: They paint pictures of idyllic Southern landscapes, characters fulfilling their roles as students, wives, boyfriends, sons. But they are not what they seem. In these stories, Nick White deconstructs the core qualities of Southern fiction, exposing deeply flawed and fascinating characters - promiscuous academics, aging podcasters, woodpecker assassins, and lawnmower enthusiasts, among others - all on wildly compelling quests. From finding an elusive bear to locating a prized timepiece to making love on the grave of an iconic writer, each story is a thrilling adventure with unexpected turns. White's honest and provocative prose will jolt listeners awake with its urgency.

©2018 Nick White (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Anthologies Family Life Fiction Literary Fiction Short Stories

Critic Reviews

“Nick White's Sweet and Low made me work. It subverted this reader's expectations again and again, leading me down improbable Southern roads, down novel, half-hidden paths that were strange and familiar all at once. At each story's end, I found myself in a surprising moment, his characters springing wholly from the page, achingly real. I wanted to separate myself from his people, to qualify his southerners, his lovers, his fighters, his abusers, his outcasts and victims. I wanted to judge them, but in the end, I found myself immersed in the narrative with them, all of us gasping, frustratingly flawed and human, achingly real. Read this collection, and let Nick introduce you to all the people you never were and still could be. Read this collection, and let him break your heart.” (Jesmyn Ward, author of National Book Award winners Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing)

“The Wild Turkey-soaked stories in White’s collection are as sumptuous and darkly shimmering as the Mississippi, along which many of them are set….the expansiveness here astounds.” (Michelle Hart, O Magazine)

“White’s brilliant first story collection peels back the curtain on masculinity and identity in the Deep South. [His] stirring stories probe the inextricable ways people’s identities are bound to and shaped by their environments, and what happens when they attempt to rise above. This is an atmospheric and expertly crafted collection.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

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