{"id":3221,"date":"2013-08-28T16:31:41","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T16:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=3221"},"modified":"2022-12-20T14:08:57","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T19:08:57","slug":"lessons-in-another-language","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/lessons-in-another-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons in Another Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″]\"Lessons<\/a><\/p>\n

paper \u2022 210 pages \u2022 18.95
\nISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-935536-00-0<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a><\/p>\n

[\/column]<\/p>\n

Lessons in Another Language: A Novella and Stories<\/em>\u00a0is the Bronze Metal Winner in the Short Story for the 2011 IPPY Award, and the Silver Metal Winner in the Short Story for the 2011 Fore Word Reviews Book of the Year Award.<\/h5>\n

Lessons in Another Language:<\/em><\/h1>\n

A Novella and Stories<\/em><\/h2>\n

Megan Staffel<\/h2>\n

Not since Alice Munro\u2019s The Beggar Maid<\/em> has there been a book which so articulately reveals the complex
\nemotional spectrum of children caught in the adult world. The novella and four stories in Lessons in Another
\nLanguage give voice to adolescent protagonists who inhabit rich emotional and sensual worlds as they
\nnavigate the wreckage created by the adults meant to be caring for them. In \u201cDaily Life of the Pioneers,\u201d two
\nmisguided parents send their children to an austere summer camp designed to mimic the lives of the \u201cpioneer
\nchildren [\u2026] your diet will be raw vegetables which are very tasty and very healthy.\u201d \u201c\u2019Why?\u2019\u201d asks one of
\nthe children, a question that resonates through Staffel\u2019s stories as they present the often-na\u00efve ways we adults
\nproject our lives and anxieties onto our children. Charlotte, newly arrived at a Southern college, wanders into
\ntown and is seduced by a thirty-something guy with a car because \u201cthe way he looked at her made her feel like
\nmaybe she wasn’t the only refugee. Like maybe he knew her same troubles.\u201d Lessons in Another Language<\/em>
\nweaves evocative narratives of abandonment and confusion, of hope betrayed more often than fulfilled.<\/p>\n

Nathan Bogmore, the protagonist of the opening story, \u201cThe Linguist,\u201d is literally learning a new language,
\nstudying French verbs in the country, where his artist mother has dragged the family on a \u201cworking vacation.\u201d
\nLikewise, all Staffel\u2019s characters find themselves getting \u201clessons in another language,\u201d the language of
\nadulthood, of danger and opportunity. Circumstances\u2014an enforced relocation, a trip home, the arrival of new
\nneighbors and with them a new best friend\u2014veer these characters towards a trouble they\u2019re one step behind
\nunderstanding. In the mind of Sam Sperry, the contemplative voice at the center of the tour-de-force novella
\n\u201cNatives and Strangers,\u201d \u201cIt was a big, complicated mess, and the only messes Sam had experience with were<\/div>\n
the simple ones that got cleaned up with angry voices, a slap on the face, or a sink full of dish soap.\u201d Staffel\u2019s
\nnoir stories are exquisite, gripping observations of lives humbled by the power of the rural land that surrounds
\nthem, of people haunted by the enormity of their longings. Their lessons and the language they teach us offer a
\nnew and compelling translation of what it means to be a family in the modern world.<\/p>\n

From “Natives and Strangers,” from\u00a0Lessons in Another Language<\/em>:<\/p>\n

School had ended. Now Sam would have only himself to depend on. For two months, there would be no
\nregular meals and nothing to take him away from the pile of buildings after the bend on Quigg Hollow Road
\nwhere the Deer Cutter sign stood at the silver mailbox.
\nThe way he saw it, reading and math were useless. Science wasn\u2019t any help either. History maybe. His
\nfather was a Vietnam vet and history might help explain some things. But with summer vacation, the days
\nstretched forward in endless repetition, his mother napping through the warm afternoons, which meant she was as
\ngood as gone when his father was raging in the kitchen, and explanations didn\u2019t matter. He had to get low, stay
\nquiet, very, very quiet, quiet as the dog Sunshine when he was watching a bug, and keep to himself. Not talking,
\nnot saying anything except those times when he was asked something directly. Sometimes he felt he was no
\ndifferent from the animals, including the insects, the birds, but mostly the insects. He was no different, certainly
\nno better, and that wasn\u2019t a bad thing. It got him through the summer and up to the day school began again when
\nhe could rise from insect to human and think his way into all of those problems they tossed out. Like, what is the
\nsquare root of 77? In summer it didn\u2019t make any difference if it was 8.7 or minus 3. It made no difference at all.
\nThose were the things he might blame for the emptiness of the days. Or maybe he just wasn\u2019t the type
\nto have friends. That summer, besides being a bug and staying low and quiet, he did a lot of riding on his bike,
\nmiles and miles, and everyday he stopped in the marsh across from the house at the end of Quigg Hollow Road
\nto watch. First the For Sale sign had appeared. That\u2019s what caught his interest in the first place. Who would
\nwant to live on Quigg Hollow where it was only Sperry, the deer cutter, and farther down, a bunch of hardly
\nused hunting camps? But the previous fall somebody had built the house on the stretch of brushy land just off
\nof 417, and then on June first, the For Sale sign appeared.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 210 pages \u2022 18.95 ISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-935536-00-0 Add to Cart [\/column] Lessons in Another Language: A Novella and Stories\u00a0is the Bronze Metal Winner in the Short Story for the 2011 IPPY Award, and the Silver Metal Winner in the Short Story for the 2011 Fore Word Reviews Book of the Year Award. Lessons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3221","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3221"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18782,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3221\/revisions\/18782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}