Unaccustomed to Grace

By Lesley Pratt Bannatyne

2022

First Published

4.58

Average Rating

162

Number of Pages

4H57M

Audio Length

The stories in Unaccustomed to Grace are often set in a slant version of reality where the extraordinary can exist side-by-side with the ordinary. In “Waiting for Ivy” a woman grieving the loss of her infant daughter discovers a listserv of parents whose dead children have been returned, as if the tragedy were a clerical error. In “Corpse Walks Into a Bar” an indigent loner agrees to bury a reanimated corpse, not realizing what it takes to find a resting place when the dead are as self-serving as the living. Characters throughout the collection act on impulses, quixotic to ferocious: a suburban dad leads a violent riot against his neighbor; an eleven-year-old boy puts himself at the nexus of a manhunt for the Boston Marathon bomber. Ultimately, the book plumbs the messiness we bring on ourselves with the best of intentions, and how we find connection and work to build a world we can survive.

Avg Rating

4.58

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

69%

4 STARS

23%

3 STARS

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Lesley Pratt Bannatyne

Author · 6 books

Lesley Bannatyne is an American author who writes extensively on Halloween, especially its history, literature, and contemporary celebration. She also writes short stories, many of which are included in her debut collection _Unaccustomed to Grace_, out from Kallisto Gaia Press in March, 2022. One of the country's foremost authorities on Halloween, Bannatyne has shared her knowledge on television specials for the History Channel ("The Haunted History of Halloween," "The Real Story of Halloween"), with Time Magazine, Slate, National Geographic, and contributed the Halloween article to World Book Encyclopedia. In 2007, she and several compatriots set the Guinness World Record for Largest Halloween Gathering, a title they held until 2009. Lesley has written five books on Halloween, ranging from a children's book, Witches Night Before Halloween, to Halloween Nation, which examines the holiday through the eyes of its celebrants. The book was nominated for a 2011 Bram Stoker Award. Her other titles are A Halloween How-To. Costumes, Parties, Destinations, Decorations (2001); A Halloween Reader. Poems, Stories, and Plays from Halloweens Past (2004), and Halloween. An American Holiday, An American History, celebrated 30 years in print in 2020. Her fiction and essays have been published in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Christian Science Monitor, and Zone 3, Pangyrus, Shooter, Craft, Ocotillo Review, Fish, and Bosque Literary Magazines. She won the 2018 Bosque fiction prize and received the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for fiction, the 2020 Ghoststory.com fiction prize, and was a finalist for many others, including the Tennessee William Literary Festival Writing Award, the Carve Prose & Poetry Contest, and the Hudson Prize. As a freelance journalist, she covered stories ranging from druids in Massachusetts to relief workers in Bolivia. Lesley lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts.