Where The Long Grass Bends: Stories

by Neela Vaswani

"Fierce and bold, these beautiful stories provide a highly kinetic exploration of sameness and difference in terms of ethnic and racial origin. Through a romp of language—vital, outrageous, unpredictable—the fireworks of Neela Vaswani’s original genius cast shadows and illumine psyches that conventional monovisions never perceive. The stories of Where the Long Grass Bends are for readers willing to view the shape-shifting of both reality and literary form. Vaswani’s characters embrace their fates through such rigorous birthing that what has been internal finally contains and defines them."—Sena Jeter Naslund "If it is true, as one of Vaswani’s characters claims, that a musical movement is the equivalent of a sentence, then the stories in Where the Long Grass Bends comprise an uncanny and beautiful symphony. This is a luminous collection, where each fiction evolves its own mythology. I want to live in the world of these stories just as I am afraid of this beautiful and often dark world. Neela Vaswani’s Where the Long Grass Bends is lovely, strange, lyrical, full of true mystery."—Victoria Redel Where the Long Grass Bends is a delight of invention and language. In whirling, catch-me-if-you-can prose, Vaswani tells stories that subvert conventional narrative by employing Indian lore, Gaelic fable, and historical legend. Spare, fierce, and unpredictable, this debut collection is boundless, even boundary-less, because Vaswani has, as David Garnett said of Virginia Woolf, a mind that sticks to nothing. Neela Vaswani lives in New York. Her short stories have appeared in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, American Literary Review , and Global City Review . In 1999, she was awarded the Italo Calvino Prize. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, and teaches in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing program at Spalding University.

Genres: Short Stories

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Neela Vaswani is the award-winning author of You Have Given Me a Country and Where the Long Grass Bends. Her work has received an American Book Award, an O. Henry Prize, and a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award. She teaches at Spalding University's MFA in writing program and is the founder of the Storylines Project with the New York Public Library. Neela Vaswani lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in here are quite odd and hard to get into at first. Much like Dubliners, which I also finished today, they often take a while to get to their center. The emotions within them, though, are easy to identify with, if you can accept some of the strangeness. This became apparent in "Twang (Release)," the first story in here I truly connected with. I highlighted quite a bit of the interactions between the protagonist and the selfish male character.
Vaswani returns to this sort of male in "Domestication of an Imaginary Goat," another favorite.
Of the many stories, the three I loved the best were all in a row (as I like these things to go): "Bolero," "The Pelvis Series," and "An Outline of No Direction." In the first two, Vaswani plumbs some strange depths of unusual worlds, creating incredibly believable characters in the process. The third is written in an unusual style, as an outline, and takes place almost entirely in a displaced woman's head. I loved to see this.

[Krista Bornman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't give out five stars willy-nilly, but this book deserves every one of them. Where The Long Grass Bends is a beautiful telling of cultural diversity and yet inclusion as well. So many themes and powerful ideas flow beneath the surface of seemingly simple plot lines. And writing is gorgeous! So fluid and musical.

I recommend it to anyone willing to look to the meaning behind the words.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's a book that refuses to be pigeon-holed, much like the author. An interesting read. The constant bombardment of metaphorical language got a little tiring. Not the kind of book to read straight through, but a delight when you read a story and think about that one story for the rest of the day.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book of shortstories.

[Lieutenant Thornback (LT) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply the best short story collection I've read in years. Neela Vaswani is a genius.

[S.s. Broca]

Just learnt about the author, shall comment after reading her book/s. Thanks.