This award-winning short story collection brings us moments of tenuousness, in which characters seek out or struggle to hold on to what's most precious in the face of change and loss.
The stories take us from suburban New Jersey to prewar Vienna to Western Oregon, chronicling the lives of, among others, a suburban teenage boy taking revenge with a stolen Revolutionary War bayonet; a woman adrift, literally and figuratively, amid a workplace affair; a nearly forgotten and destitute musician attempting to reclaim his creative spark; and a young Mark Rothko finding his way after several early failures.
While It Lasts speaks to how we are all bound by limited time to achieve what we must despite our own knowledge of how everything is fleeting.
"A binge-worthy assembly of stories, but unlike what the title says, the sensation and pleasure of reading them is not just while the book lasts, but long afterward. Crisscrossing centuries, continents, and an array of characters, every story is immediately immersible; the open endings sometimes stab, other times ring with the resonance and echo of history or memory. Nadelson is a short form maste
Cris Mazza
"While It Lasts, Scott Nadelson's transporting new collection of short fiction, illuminates the close and volatile bond between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Historical figures like Mark Rothko, Clara Lemlich Shavelson, and Daniel Mendoza tangle with the same questions of purpose that the rest of us do, while ordinary fictional characters find opportunities for profound vulnerability or soar
David Ebenbach
"Some of the characters in Scott Nadelson's generous and wide-ranging sixth story collection are based on famous people: the artist Mark Rothko, the musician Arnold Schoenberg, the union organizer Clara Lemlich, the guitarist John Fahey, and the eighteenth century London prizefighter Daniel Mendoza. All are captured in private, beautifully imagined moments of their lives, either before, or after,
