MID-AIR: TWO NOVELLAS

Fate is explored in the fall and rise of two twentieth-century American families.

Critics re Mid-Air:

“ ‘Mid-Air’ is yet another inventive excavation of the past, this one in the form of two novellas whose themes are family and class, one an account of patrician decline and the other a tale of rags to riches. Each is a minor masterpiece, and both gain resonance in juxtaposition with each other. Together they form a witty and moving portrait of American life going back a half-century or more.”
—Daniel Akst, The Wall Street Journal

“What links the Perkinses and the Whites, apart from the fact that their trajectories are meeting “midair”? For starters, there’s Shorr’s eye for telling detail as she unreels the families’ varied experiences. And then there’s her insightful acknowledgment that those experiences are transformed as they sink into the past, that their subtle shadings will inevitably be lost.”
—Alida Becker, The New York Times Book Review

“Finely wrought….beautifully written….[Shorr’s] prose at times [evokes] John O’Hara in its cruel accuracy, at other times Henry James’s exquisite sensitivity to class. Yet Shorr’s vision is her own….This writer can blast the past into the present.”
—Carlo Wolff, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Shorr proves herself a literary mimic of the first order with these two pitch-perfect stories. . . .”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In style and substance, Shorr summons the works of Anne Tyler as she rejoices in her characters’ day-to-day experiences, dropping pearls of insight into crystalline vignettes.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Shorr’s prose is fluid and supple. . . . [H]er insights are so keen, and her storytelling so
elegant and natural. . . . [T]his book is a quiet accomplishment.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Victoria Shorr is a conjurer of the highest order, artfully creating apposite tales of
family ruin and family success in her wry, insightful, and elegant prose.”
—Lily Tuck, author of Sisters