Published in 2024
256 pages
Jill McCorkle has the distinction of having published her first two novels on the same day in 1984. Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said: “one suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist. With July 7th, she is also a full grown one.” Since then she has published five other novels—most recently, Hieroglyphics—and four collections of short stories. Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books and four of her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories. McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, the North Carolina Award for Literature and the Thomas Wolfe Prize; she was recently inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame. McCorkle has taught at Harvard, Brandeis, and NC State where she remains affiliated with the MFA Program in creative writing and she is core faculty in the Bennington Writing Seminars.
What is this book about?
Beloved author Jill McCorkle delivers a collection of masterful stories that are as complex as novels—deeply perceptive, funny, and tragic in equal measure—about crimes large and small.
McCorkle, author of the New York Times bestselling Life After Life and the widely acclaimed Hieroglyphics (“One of our wryest, warmest, wisest storytellers” —Rebecca Makkai), brings us a breathtaking collection of stories that offers an intimate look at the moments when a person’s life changes forever.
Old Crimes delves into the lives of characters who hold their secrets and misdeeds close, even as the past continues to reverberate across generations. And despite the characters’ yearnings for connection, they can’t seem to tell the whole truth: A woman uses her hearing impairment as a way to guard herself from her husband’s commentary. A telephone lineman strains to communicate with his family even as he feels pushed aside in a digital world. A young couple buys a confessional booth for fun, only to discover the cost of honesty. A family reunion, ripe with treasured memories, takes place amid a secret that will alter all of their futures. Throughout, McCorkle takes us deep into these conflicted and sympathetic characters, puzzling to figure out the meaning of their own lives.
Profoundly moving and unforgettable, for fans of Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout, and Lily King, the stories in Old Crimes reveal why McCorkle has long been considered a master of the form, probing lives full of great intensity, longing and affection, and deep regret.
