Emerald City

by Jennifer Egan

1993 · 192 pages

short stories
books
fiction & literature
literary fiction

Keep track of it on your own bookshelf.

About this book

A collection of masterful stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad: “Boldly modulated tales of displacement and blazing moments of truth.... Riveting, vaguely Hitchcockian.... Piercingly tender.... Outstanding" (The New York Times Book Review).

These elegant and poignant stories—Egan's first collection—deal with loneliness and longing, regret and desire. Egan’s characters—models and housewives, bankers and schoolgirls—are united by their search for something outside their own realm of experience. They set out from locations as exotic as China and Bora Bora, as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan, or as familiar as suburban Illinois to seek their own transformations. The stories in Emerald City are seamless evocations of self-discovery.

Quotes by Jennifer Egan

From Wikiquote

"We live in a city where people will steal the hair off your head if you give them half a chance, but you leave your stuff lying in plain sight and expect it to be waiting for you when you come back?"
She and Coz were collaborators, writing a story whose end had already been determined: she would get well”
It jarred Sasha to think of herself as a glint in the hazy memories that Alex would struggle to organize a year or two from now: Where was that place with the bathtub? Who was that girl?”