No Diving Allowed - Paperback

by Louise Marburg (Author)

From F. Scott Fitzgerald to John Cheever, the swimming pool has long held a unique place in the mythos of the American idyll, by turns status symbol and respite. The fourteen stories that comprise NO DIVING ALLOWED fearlessly plunge the depths of the human condition as award-winning author Louise Marburg freights her narratives with the often unfathomable pressure of what lies beneath. In "Identical," sibling rivalry between brothers exposes lingering resentments of men who never made peace with boyhood animosities; "Let Me Stay With You" follows a man whose innocent attention to a child is gravely misunderstood. The trials of a fractured family come to the fore in the trenchant, unapologetic "Minor Thefts." Siblings, friends, parents, couples, children: the characters in these stories ask how much any of us can bear before we break. Marburg's writing is agile, witty, and crisply spare. These are tales of regret and mercy, of bonds forged and frayed, and most of all our individual capacity to love even that which damns us. As readers of these pages will learn, the difference between swimming and drowning is often nothing more than the will to live.

Author Biography

Louise Marburg is the author of a previous collection of stories, The Truth About Me, which was the winner of the Independent Press Book Award for short story collections and shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her stories have appeared in such journals as Narrative, Ploughshares, The Southampton Review, and many others. She lives in New York City with her husband, the artist Charles Marburg.