Short Story Collection Review    

 

Curled in a Bed of Love

Stories by Catherine Brady

University of Georgia Press, 2003

Hardcover, $24.95 (193 pages)

ISBN: 0-8203-2545-7

Catherine Brady's Curled in a Bed of Love examines whether comfort or chemistry is the glue holding together long-term relationships. Set in the San Francisco Bay area, each short story examines threats to relationships -- falling out of love, ennui, infidelity, illness, and the difficulties of maintaining affection while balancing careers, households, and children. 

Brady's couples whether gay or straight, married or life partners, conventional or not, wealthy, middle-class or struggling artists, all share the same desire. They crave "happily ever after" and cleave to their illusions.   

Curled in a Bed of Love is a poignant collection, full of rich details and passionate, wounded adults still willing to believe in the promise of love. 

Catherine Brady, whose first short story collection, The End of the Class War, was a Book Sense 76 selection and finalist for the Western States Award in Fiction, teaches at the M.F.A. Writing Program at the University of San Francisco. Curled in a Bed of Love is the Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Pam Kingsbury

Southern Scribe Reviews

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