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Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
These ten stories take us across the country—from rural Pennsylvania to Southern California to suburban Connecticut—and deep into characters struggling to find meaning in their day-to-day lives. A young man reconstructs the memory of a friend’s deadly fall. A childless couple, craving the affection of an exchange student, fails to set the boundaries that would keep him safe. And in the title story, a college student looking for her soul mate confronts an impossible choice.
The Theory of Light and Matter is a stunningly astute vision of contemporary American suburbia, full of tension, heartbreak, and emotional complexity—the work of an important new voice.
OTHER EDITIONS:
Hardcover Australian Edition U.K. Edition
"A true master of the short story, a writer of honesty and plainspoken poetry who knows the human soul in all its light and shadow and harnesses every sentence to the purpose of revealing it."
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The View from the Seventh Layer
"I've known of Andrew Porter's genius for ten years. He's a born storyteller. Every page of The Theory of Light and Matter will change something in your life and refresh you . . . He makes his own space instantly and invites you in. Hats off!"
—Barry Hannah, author of Airships
“Andrew Porter’s fiction is thoughtful, lucid and highly controlled. It is especially striking for the strong consistency of vision that is achieved in every story. He has the kind of voice one can accept as universal—honest and grave, with transparency as its adornment.”
—Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gilead
“In a world where everything, including stories, seem to be moving so fast, reading Andrew Porter's book is like stopping to catch your breath - and remember. These stories are patient and rare, and, to my mind, permanent. This is the kind of book that you will keep taking off the shelf to read again and again because you want to re-capture what it felt like to read them for the first time.”
—Peter Orner, Author of Esther Stories
“[A] luminous collection ... Porter's use of poetic yet plainspoken language and his thoughtful consideration of the fractured American family place his writing in direct dialogue with the work of John Cheever and Raymond Carver. But Porter is no mere student of these masters. As the 10 stories in this luminous collection demonstrate, Porter has his own compelling vision of human longing, loneliness and grief. ... Porter's "The Theory of Light and Matter" is a memorable debut that honors the history of the short story form while blazing a new trajectory all its own.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“[A] beautifully executed short story collection . . . Porter pulls us through the looking glass into a world where adults suffer from failed careers or sexual confusion and their offspring are underachievers at best or, at worst, mentally “not right.” There’s a crisp economy to these stories that nicely underpins their offbeat narratives.”
—Texas Monthly
“[An] impressive debut story collection . . . [Porter’s] characters' lives seem placid and idyllic on the surface. Yet underneath, they are roiled by secrets. . . Loss, sacrifice, choice and responsibility are some of the other themes tightly woven into this impressive debut.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“In Andrew Porter's [collection], there is a wave-like movement in each story, a swelling toward the event and an ebbing toward the new future after the event . . . in some cases the event will lodge, like a splinter, in other's lives. Porter is in it for the backward glance; he believes we might actually be able, if we look hard enough and study small movements, to predict the future.”
—The Los Angeles Times (“Discoveries” Selection)
“Lovely . . . There’s a certain slim-hipped, youthful masculinity to Andrew Porter’s 2008 debut . . . Porter delivers suburbia just exactly as you’ve experienced it, but with all the dark corners intact, and some of them even lit right up. Normal people, across America, struggling to discover the meaning in their everyday lives. His voice is even, often understated, so much so that at times, the sharp details he is able to illuminate come as a delightful surprise.”
—January Magazine
“Beautifully written . . . I opened it, started to read, and never put it down.”
—The Lakeland Times
“Porter’s stories compel the reader to examine the importance of reflection. We are given stories in which the lens is slightly obscured, the angel unnatural; stories in which the distance between event and the recounting of that event allows for the slowing of heartbeats, the return of breath, the calm surrender of grappling with an unchangeable past.”
—The Black Warrior Review
“Porter follows the Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor’s usage of raw and plainspoken language . . . [and] like Carver, Porter focuses on people’s internal weaknesses and how past memories of disappointment and regret become a burden.”
—The Poly Post
“[A] luminous collection ... Porter's use of poetic yet plainspoken language and his thoughtful consideration of the fractured American family place his writing in direct dialogue with the work of John Cheever and Raymond Carver. But Porter is no mere student of these masters. As the 10 stories in this luminous collection demonstrate, Porter has his own compelling vision of human longing, loneliness and grief . . . Porter's "The Theory of Light and Matter" is a memorable debut that honors the history of the short story form while blazing a new trajectory all its own.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“[Porter] is a master storyteller, a creator of tender and hopeful characters, a writer who whispers rather than shouts. We look forward to hearing more from such an amazing talent . . . This collection deserves to be read and reread.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“[An] exquisite debut collection . . . [These] stories have a hard-won grit and imagination to spare.”
—Time Out New York
“[A] fantastic collection of short stories.”
—The Houston Chronicle
“One of the ten best collections of short fiction for 2008.”
—The Kansas City Star
“Andrew Porter can achieve more in a handful of pages than most writers can in a hundred. I’ve read most of the stories in this collection two and three times, and I continue to marvel at how they can be so spare and rich at the same time. My favorite book of the year.”
—Billy Taylor, The San Antonio Express-News (Best Books of 2008)
“Andrew Porter is one of the best young American writers today.”
—McNally Jackson Books
“Moving . . . These ten stories are full of wisdom and deep sadness. Through Porter's beautiful and restrained prose, they accumulate power slowly and deceptively until they become difficult to shake. Like the best writers of childhood, Porter understands that these are fundamentally stories about the weight of memory. . . [They] cut to the emotional quick of human experience with stunning compression.”
—The American Book Review
“Heralded by critical praise . . . Porter’s tales are brimming with characters both likable and bewilderingly human. We see in them our own flaws and shortcomings and desires. These are quintessentially stories about the desire for redemption, the search for meaning, and the need for human contact . . . Porter does a fantastic job of recreating these entrancing confluences of lives.” (A Critics Pick)
—The San Antonio Current
“In Porter’s debut story collection, he casts an unflinching, psychological eye on modern suburban life, its failed and revised dreams, and the madness and illness that can chip away at families and relationships.”
—Poets & Writers Magazine
“Stunning meditations on loss and remembrance . . . Porter crafts stories of disparate lives . . . in an evocative, straightforward prose style reminiscent of Raymond Carver.”
—The Daily Beast (“Hot Reads” Pick)
“Readers who enjoy the classic American short story, served up with a side order of edgy intensity, will reap the rewards. Porter’s stories are sparse but powerful.”
—Ricky Kleffel, The Agony Column
“An impressive collection . . . Porter [has] a restrained prose style reminiscent of craftsmen like Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff . . . [A] writer whose work seems destined to attract an appreciative following”
—Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf-Awareness
“Like Raymond Carver, like Richard Ford, in just a few short stories Andrew Porter made it clear to me he would be one of those rare writers who’s work I will hunt down for as long as he’s alive and writing.”
—Nick Earls, author of After January
“In this collection, every story is a winner, each one remains with you and takes a piece of your heart after you close the book . . . I found myself completely immersed whether I was in Texas, Connecticut, or traveling on a plane. I was inside the stories, inside the characters themselves—of them. I loved this book.”
—Mostly Fiction Book Reviews
“Every story in the debut from Andrew Porter, The Theory of Light and Matter, surprised and seduced me as a reader. He has a crisp, clean, evocative style and a way with clever endings that reminds me of Raymond Carver.”
—Jo Case, Readings Monthly
“Wonderful . . . [a writer] of exceptional vision and voice.”
—Shenandoah
“A work of unadorned beauty. . . Porter’s collection draws immediate comparison to the work of Raymond Carver . . . Like Carver, Porter is expert in understanding the weak threads that hold together broken families and the way people suppress their disappointments and experience epiphanies far too late to make a difference.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer (A Noteworthy Paperback)
“[A] beautifully executed short story collection . . . Porter pulls us through the looking glass into a world where adults suffer from failed careers or sexual confusion and their offspring are underachievers at best or, at worst, mentally “not right.” There’s a crisp economy to these stories that nicely underpins their offbeat narratives.”
—Texas Monthly
“Delicately lovely tales . . . Porter’s spare, lean voice deftly captures the rhythms of recollection, with the tranquil resignation of recounting what has already happened cloaking the latent emotions left roiling underneath . . . Rendered with sensitivity and depth. This new author deserves some attention.”
—San Francisco Book Review
“Like taking a sip of the clearest mountain spring water . . . With clear, strong prose marked by devious underpinnings, Porter’s style is straightforward, his characters careful narrators treading above a murky pool.”
—Booklist
“Beautiful stories . . . safe and menacing at the same time.”
—The Boston Globe
“Porter chronicles suburbia in these timeless, well-crafted stories, and this collection stands out as one of the year's most unforgettable works of fiction.”
—David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy
“It’s easy to understand why Andrew Porter won the Flannery O’Connor Award: He deserves it. The stories in his collection The Theory of Light and Matter are exceptional.”
—Real Change News
“Ten remarkable stories . . . Porter’s prose is clear and unadorned, and impresses the reader with its apparent openness. Through the variable lens of memory, each narrator struggles to get his (occasionally, her) story straight and, in doing so, some version of the truth is revealed . . . The Theory of Light and Matter is a a wonderful introduction to Andrew Porter’s fiction.”
— Carol Reid, The Short Review
“An evocative first book . . . Porter displays his unique talent for showing that forsythia-filled suburban front yards are not at all what they seem. [His] prose continually lulls the reader into the muggy landscape of faraway memory, back to a place in which the roots of a later tragedy were first born.”
—Gulf Coast
“[A] superbly written collection of short stories . . . Porter is a gifted storyteller.”
—Collegiate Times
“Beautifully and wisely [written] . . . [These] stories take the reader on journeys to rural Amish country, suburban neighborhoods and a cottage in New England. Each time, the reader is delightfully welcomed into the action and sated with rich description and sharp looks at interpersonal relationships . . . The 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction . . . could not have been bestowed upon a more deserving work.”
—The Collegian
“Andrew Porter writes with the voice of an older storyteller . . . [These] tales seem almost timeless.”
—Smile Politely: Champaign-Urbana’s Online Magazine
“Porter gets at what it is to be human.”
—Mason County News
“Porter weaves a web of beautiful, quiet stories.”
—The Observant
“Porter is an accomplished storyteller and his ability to pierce right at the heart of ordinary people’s fears and desires leaves the reader wanting more.”
—Emily Laidlaw, Readings (Australia)
“The Theory of Light and Matter goes beyond storytelling. It shares stories, giving readers the impression that they are not merely reading, but also experiencing and learning.”
—The Briar Cliff Review
“Moving, original, and unforgettable, this is a must-own collection.”
—The Strand
• Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Winner
• Foreword Book of the Year Award (Short Fiction), Winner
• Drake Emerging Writer Award, Winner
• Kansas City Star’s Top Ten Short Story Collections of 2008
• San Antonio Express-News’ Best Books of 2008
• Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Longlist
• Steven Turner First Book Award, Finalist
• The Paterson Book Prize, Finalist
• Writers League of Texas Best Book of 2008, Finalist
the theory of light and matter
