The Instinct
for Bliss
by Melissa Pritchard
Winner of
the 1996 Janet
Heidinger Kafka Prize
A New York Times Editor's Choice Book
Zoland
Books (now part of Steerforth Press)
Cambridge, MA 1995
Hardcover
From the young cook in "Sweet Feed," who prepares a gourmet last supper for a prisoner on death row; to the neglected, anorexic girl in "Eating for Theodora," who discovers spiritual nourishment in the faith of her elderly Hispanic neighbor; to the world famous horticulturalist in "The Erotic Life of Luther Burbank," who remains perplexed by the desires of the women in his family -- all of these stories demonstrate a longing to travel beyond safe boundaries and outside easy assumptions.
Praise -- for more reviews and praise of this book, click here.
"Vitality passes like a torch through such stories....
Her stories read as exercises in creative writing: smart, but heavy-handed."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Melissa Pritchard's prose, that darkly lyrical
firmament, is brightened by the dizzy luminous arrangement of her stars
and satellites, her great gifts to us: humor, irony, kindness, brilliance.
The Instinct for Bliss is a natural wonder."
--Antonya Nelson
"This book of stories cuts its own path. It is no
surprise that Melissa Pritchard can illuminate the inside of these lives
with an almost unearthly light. We know she's gifted. But this book wants
to abduct us with its insistence, its lyric insistence on peeling back
layer after layer of our comfort and familiarity until we are awake to
the four fundamental elements of this world: earth, food, sorrow and desire.
After the book is closed, The Instinct for Bliss still simmers.
It is a special book."
--Ron Carlson, author of At the Jim Bridger
"Melissa Pritchard writes with a moral authority
and lyrical dexterity that propels her fiction into those places closest
to the human heart. The Instinct for Bliss simply underscores this
writer's already manifest gifts. Long may Melissa Pritchard continue to
tell us stories."
--Richard Currey
"Pritchard creates a perfect balance of droll humor,
pathos and quiet transcendence in this collection of short fiction. They
are fine stories -- entertaining, humane, and sure to linger in the mind."
--The Arizona Republic
"In The Instinct for Bliss Melissa Pritchard
seems to have located the sub-atom of passionate love and split it, putting
a fearsome lot of heat and love at the heart of our sorry affairs. Pritchard's
bliss is a terrible, rageful, shameless, magnificent visionary state that
is, at once, down-and-dirty human and God-drenched, fit for angels. The
book both abrades and uplifts, slays and saves me."
--Sharon Sheehe Stark