Gray Hampton: A Suite of Stories

Click here to read a Kirkus Review of GRAY HAMPTON

by Gayle Hanratty (2017)
$16 softcover

Because these short stories comprise a ‘suite,’ they should be read in order, just as, say, the parts of a Bach Suite for Unaccompanied Cello should be heard serially. There’s huge variety among these stories and significant silences between them. Gayle Hanratty’s use of form recreates the very way we both experience and remember our lives. Defined moments, snatched from the flow of time, create vibrant and significant meaning. While Hanratty’s suite of stories has caught time on the wing, each moment and each individual story digs its toes into the real earth. These stories have the toughness and truth-telling of authentic tenderness extended toward our human condition.

– Sena Jeter Naslund, editor, & author of Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits, The Fountain of St. James Court, or Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman, & six others

This lovely book is a meditation on everyday people whose lives are normal yet magical, quiet yet never dull. Gayle Hanratty has fashioned a complex, living world and a memorable cast of characters with a precise and wise understanding of the human heart.

–Silas House, author of The Coal Tattoo & A Parchment of Leaves

The characters in Gayle Hanratty’s Gray Hampton are bursting with life, as indelible as the setting that shapes them. Deftly (and boldly) spanning almost a century, as well as multiple points of view, through several generations of a single family, this glorious suite of stories is imbued with the author’s clear eye and good heart.

–Robin Lippincott, author of Blue Territory: A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan Mitchell, and Rufus + Syd

Gray Hampton is a deeply felt, at times darkly humorous collection, brimming with complicated, vivid characters, as tough and tenacious as briars. Gayle Hanratty has peopled her book with characters who are not only brave, self-reliant and unforgettable; they are also tender in fleeting, startling, and profoundly affecting ways. These stories will break your heart and will remind you of the things that matter most in this life.

–Eleanor Morse, author of White Dog Fell from the Sky