Comments & Reviews
Read Kate's interview with Kim Underwood of the Winston-Salem Journal Reporter
(July 22)
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Hear Kate's interview with NPR's Frank Stasio, host of "The State of Things" (July 13)
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Pepper Hunt is featured as "pick of the day" from the Emerging Writer's Network (May 17 entry).
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".....The characters who populate the stories are the people you might meet at an Annual Christmas party. There's the musician, the photographer, the divorced nursery school director. But instead of skimming the surface of their lives, Blackwell gazes unblinkingly at their deepest fears and desires. That's the kind of truth that fiction gets at best."
–Vicki Cheng, The News & Observer, 9/9/07
"You Won’t Remember This, the first book of short stories by Kate Blackwell, a Winston-Salem native, is one of the finest collections I’ve read, and, in my work, I am privileged to read many. Blackwell’s wisdom and subtlety are evident even in the title. By telling us we won’t remember, she ensures that we do..." More>
–Anne Barnhill, Journal Book Reviewer 7/29/07 (read full article)
"Blackwell's stories are jewels, each polished and tweaked to perfection, characters vividly rendered and plots as tightly wound as watch springs. Most of the stories are set in or near Blackwell's native North Carolina ... and the characters are the members of a genteel set who are not rich but well off and not snobbish but well mannered. Yet behind the doors of their neat white houses with their carefully tended gardens lives a special kind of despair that has always fascinated writers like Flannery O'Connor and Katherine Anne Porter. Blackwell is a literary relative of those writers."
–Greg Langley, Baton Rouge Advocate 8/12/07 More>
(download full article as pdf, 3mb)
"With this short-story collection, Kate Blackwell enters the company of contemporary writers–Anne Tyler and Roxana Robinson come to mind–who plumb these shadowy, silent dramas. These writers understand how decisions happen little by little, so incrementally that final choices seem merely a consequence of everyday currents. It is on such pivots that Ms. Blackwell's stories turn...Her characters are artistically drawn, the sort of individuals we know who are ordinary yet not entirely transparent. Not our best friends, but the ones on the outer edge of the circle who don't talk much about themselves."
–Linda Crosson, Dallas Morning News 7/22/07 (download full article as pdf, 222k)
"HOW do writers do it? How do they take the same tiresome human dramas and make us care, make us wonder how it will turn out this time? In the first story in this debut collection, "My First Wedding," the narrator asks, "For who will remember women like my mother, my aunt, and Augusta? Who will remember any of us who live so hidden, so far from nearly everything?" The details of their lives, like those of many of Kate Blackwell's middle-class women, are familiar to the point of invisibility. But something inside them struggles to get out.
Books are the fount of all the passions and opinions of the matriarchs in "My First Wedding." They discuss and dismiss authors with absolute confidence, even as much of their own lives is beyond their control. In "The Secret Life of Peonies," Alexandra, so preppy, so ordinary you might not even notice her in real life, exposes a rage to the reader that threatens to rip the social fabric she and her husband hide behind. In "What We Do for Love," hypocrisy and fascination with the downfall of others (in this case, the courtroom drama of a "local blueblood" who shoots his wife and her lover) provide the needed distraction. Blackwell's onto something about the way we fold love into life that may prove useful: Best be on the safe side. – L.A. Times, 7/8/07
"Released this month, Blackwell's collection of 12 stories may be one of the best books of the year. Originally from North Carolina, Blackwell, 65, now lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Md. You Won't Remember This is, remarkably, her first book. The title story opens: "Angelina lay in a green canvas chair in her garden and watched a white butterfly play among her flowers. She had never in her life sat still long enough to watch a butterfly; even as a child, she was always busy. "With that we learn of Angelina, who is pregnant, thinking back on her high-strung life, uneasy with the time to relax, and uncertain of what's in store. Her well-meaning husband is close by, as is her watchful mother. But in many ways this is a lonely journey for Angelina, and a lovely story to read. In Blackwell's first story in the book, "My First Wedding", Augusta, who is about to be married, prepares a list of books to read over the next five decades. She's not marrying into a romantic love; she's settling for what Blackwell describes as the "still" life. It's a story that penetrates into one of those things we seldom talk about with one another." – The Clarion Ledger 6/28/07
"...for those who love a good short story, a collection of those written in the best tradition of Southern fiction is You Won't Remember This by Kate Blackwell ($22.50, Southern Methodist University Press). ... These stories reveal an exceptional, well- crafted talent that invites us into places and the lives of characters the reader would not otherwise have access. These are edgy lives filled with conflict and tension, stories that span decades. This book is a real treat for anyone who loves good writing." –Bookviews by Alan Caruba, July 2007 www.bookviews.com
"Engaging characters face the tangles of life--marriage, adultery, malfeasance, aging, pregnancy--in this adroit debut collection. Twelve finely crafted stories, based in the South, are grounded in the ordinary, yet clarify nuances with intimate angles. In the standout "Heartbeatland," Anne and her husband have recently moved to North Carolina and come up with sardonic nicknames for people in their new neighborhood. Yet, when an unexpected death occurs, Anne finds that she must rely on their neighbors to come to terms with the tragedy. "What We Do for Love" showcases a delicately involved triangle between Linda, a weaver; Tanner, Linda's best friend from childhood; and Jack, Tanner's husband. Backdropped against a love-crossed murder trial, the underlying relationships simmer with affecting poignancy. In "The Minaret," Miles and Bunny, a husband and wife on vacation in Greece, strike up a relationship with a younger couple that yields a provocative outcome. Although a few stories evince a distancing imbalance, narrative strengths lie in Blackwell's clever perceptions and sharp insight." – Booklist
"DC's Kate Blackwell has been publishing stories in literary journals for years while teaching at the Writer's Center in Bethesda. Her first book, YOU WON'T REMEMBER THIS, is out June 30. Most of the characters in these finely crafted stories are, like Blackwell, Southerners. In "My First Wedding", a woman recalls being set up as a 12-year-old with an unappealing boy at a wedding reception: 'He managed in the course of ten minutes to crush my small right toe and spill punch down the front of my new dress...In the midst of the sultry blooming night of Augusta's wedding, my waist and hands clasped the boy's hot palms as we moved heavily to imitation Duke Ellington, I yearned more than I had ever yearned for anything in my life to be reading a good book' " —William O'Sullivan, Washingtonian
"A delicate but strong collection of short stories set in the South, all about the ways that social conventions both constrict us and allow us to live with one another. Blackwell (who is making her fiction début in her mid-60s) is a luminous writer, and I hope she has a whole drawer of manuscripts waiting to be published." (Reviewed in Publishers Weekly.)
—Kevin Allman, Writing About Writing, www.kevinallman.com
Blog: http://kevinallman.typepad.com
From Publishers Weekly: "Blackwell's debut collection vividly draws on the Southern storytelling tradition in its 12 gentle but unsentimental stories. In "My First Wedding," an unnamed narrator remembers her first peek at the rituals of Southern bridehood when her cousin Augusta married a Yankee. "Heartbeatland" is Anne Tyler territory: Anne and David, transplants to North Carolina who call themselves "the Schoolmaster" and "Princess Annabel," develop sarcastic nicknames for their neighbors, but when David dies, Anne finds herself simultaneously relying on and distrusting the "neigh-boors." Blackwell illustrates her stories with sharp and sometimes unsettling word snapshots: a past-its-prime piñata disgorges "misshapen" candy "mottled with mold"; a miserably pregnant woman plods "around the garden, holding her enormous stomach, her legs like an elephant's." Even "Pepper Hunt," a disturbing five-page story about a divorced man and his daughter meeting in a luncheonette, is a pinpoint novella with fully drawn characters. If Blackwell has one unifying theme, it's how ritual both distances people and enables them to live together. This shrewd collection should appeal to fans of contemporary Southern short story masters like Tim Gautreaux and John Biguenet." —June, Publishers Weekly
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“Kate Blackwell has what Flannery O’Connor called ‘a talent for humanity.’ YOU WON’T REMEMBER THIS is the work of a seasoned writer, despite it being a first collection. In each story, Blackwell looks at life with a direct gaze and she writes with elegant measured tones and with beautiful melancholy humor. YOU WON’T REMEMBER THIS surely derives its honesty and power and music from the great Southern tradition—but in its sheer comprehension and passion, it is universal as well. The first story itself, “My First Wedding,” is an exquisite gem.”—Howard Norman, National Book Award finalist for The Bird Artist and The Northern Lights
“Kate Blackwell is a wonderful and very perceptive writer who knows more about love, and more about loss, than most of us ever will. These stories about all sorts of Southern men and women are both funny and sad, and always subtly but deeply sympathetic.”—Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist for Foreign Affairs, author most recently of The Last Resort
“In these remarkably intelligent and quirky stories, Kate Blackwell sweeps the reader into a distinct world all her own. Set mostly in the contemporary South, we visit the sad, earthy lives of men and women as friends and lovers. These are harshly honest and generous stories embroidered with humor. They present a tableau as vivid as a Dutch painting, both startling and alive. I couldn’t put it down.”—Patricia Browning Griffith, playwright and author of the recent novel Supporting the Sky
“This fine collection belies its title. It is an extraordinary collection of stories all having to do with what is too often hushed in the human heart; it is full of characters you come to care for and trouble for which you cannot easily choose sides. All twelve stories are finely crafted and move as easily as an overheard conversation. Each in its own way is about relationships; about the human struggle to connect in everyday life with the people central to our own sense of health and well being. And you most definitely WILL remember it.”—Robert Bausch, author of a story collection and six novels, including A Hole in the Earth and Out of Season
“Throughout this fine first collection, there is a fascinating tension between limpid prose and incisive truth. Kate Blackwell tends to deal with secrets—an unfulfilled desire, a denied knowledge, a hidden love. She writes with especial power and insight about the parts of themselves women give up—or bury—when they marry.”—Joyce Johnson, National Book Critics Circle Award winner for her memoir Minor Characters and author of the recent memoir Missing Men
“These are necessary stories ... [that] possess a quality of devastating clarity that is all too rare in short fiction. Each is a rare entrée into the ordinary everyday world without the added special effects of all-consuming tragedy. This collection is prime proof that there is nothing, nothing like a collection of short stories to offer an almost Cubist perspective on the way women live.’’—Cynthia Shearer, author of the novels Wonder Book of Air and The Celestial Jukebox