Not: a Trio

Acclaimed novelist, short story writer, and poet, David Huddle captivates us with a new collection. Not: A Trio is a sequence of three related stories that, taken together, form a unified work of fiction. This faceted approach is especially suited to a work that reveals the intricate connections among Danny Marlow, Claire McClelland, and Ben McClelland. Danny, Claire, and Ben are thoughtful people who know each other well—yet hardly at all. Danny narrates the first story, introducing the reader to Claire, a therapist who has, he says, "lived a life that would drop most men in their tracks." The second story, told in the third person, explores the character of Claire's second husband Ben. These two men and their stories set the stage for the appearance of Claire in the third and most powerful story. Claire informs the reader at the outset that a crisis looms: "At any rate, I'm not going to be able to go on with the life I have so carefully constructed for myself here in town." Huddle is especially concerned with the forces that separate these singular individuals from each other—and from themselves—as well as with the romantic and sexual energy pulling Danny and Claire together and with the wistful intimacy briefly held between Claire and Ben. In the process, the book also draws a darkly humorous picture of small-town life in contemporary Vermont. Critics have praised David Huddle for his skill in creating individual voices and selves that work together to reveal intimately connected lives. He has done so once again in Not: A Trio, leaving the reader with what feels like a secret understanding of these three people and the forces that move them.

About the Author :
David Huddle is Professor of English at the University of Vermont and the Bread Loaf School of English. He is the author of Intimates: A Book of Stories, Summer Lake: New and Selected Poems, A David Huddle Reader, and The Story of a Million Years, a novel that was named a Distinguished Book of the Year by Esquire and a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times Book Review in 1999. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers as well as in Best American Short Stories.

Review :
"[Huddle] succeeds in Not: A Trio with developing forcefully the still relevant theme of individual lives blazing their own trails in a world of conventional expectations and proscriptions. Throughout the book, Huddle is remarkably adept at fashioning his complex characters, creating an equally convincing psychological portrait of each as he or she interacts with others." —The Georgia Review "Huddle provides glimpses of how discovery, recognition, and the unknown inextricably unite each of his characters. Not: A Trio treats its characters as gems do light." —Virginia Quarterly Review "[Huddle] remains an accomplished observer of the pangs of middle age, of communities so tight they're nearly claustrophobic and of the strange turns love can take." —Publishers Weekly "Small-town society in contemporary Vermont captured by one of the leading diagnosticians of life, love and social mores." —Notre Dame Review "Huddle has always been masterful at plumbing the mysteries of the human heart, but this effort is particularly moving—and especially sharp. . . . His latest effort, Not, is at once beautiful and smart. The subject matter is vintage Huddle: The domestic minefields that even the most decent people consciously or unconsciously build around themselves. Set in Bennington and central Vermont, the three stories are told from the perspective of three linked adults, but all built to Claire McClelland's final understanding of who she is and what her life has meant. The voices—psychologist Claire McClelland, her late husband Ben, her lover Danny—are all carefully rendered and palpably real. Each is inviting and idiosyncratic, and a reader cannot help but care deeply for them all." —Chris Bohjalian "David Huddle's new book is the best he's done, and that's saying a very great deal. It is wise and beautiful. In an age as stupid and ugly as ours, what could be more to our liking and our need?" —Hayden Carruth "David Huddle's new work of fiction, Not: A Trio, focuses on the story of the most remarkable woman I have encountered in American fiction since Charles Frazier's Ada, in Cold Mountain. Although Mr. Huddle's Claire McClelland lives at the far northern end of the Appalachian Mountains from Frazier's people, she too eventually retreats to the wilderness to examine her life, particularly her relationships with men. The result is a compelling, original, and superb book by one of the very best fiction writers of our day." —Howard Frank Mosher "Beautiful, substantial, and sophisticated in character and construction. Not is a stunning achievement, intertwining its three stories about absence into a single taut, haunting, psychological journey." —Kelly Cherry "David Huddle has already established himself as one of our most gifted and productive masters of short fiction. Here, in the closely interrelated two short stories and novella that make up Not: A Trio, he has given us a virtuoso performance, a rich and layered story involving fully realized characters, a wonderful sense of place (Vermont), and a fugue of several distinct voices making a music all their own. This is a powerful, deeply moving work which enhances Huddle's reputation for literary excellence." —George Garrett