The Appearance of a Hero: The Tom Mahoney Stories
Aug 2012 · St. Martin's Press
Ebook
176
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
"Levine's stories are riveting and subtle, shot through with a muted wisdom and palpable compassion." ?Publisher's Weekly
Tom Mahoney is the golden boy everyone knew in school: good-looking, charming, an athlete---sought after by women, the envy of men. His success in life seems a foregone conclusion. In The Appearance of a Hero, Tom navigates the passage into adulthood, his story chronicled from every perspective but his own.
Tom crisscrosses the country in search of direction, affecting the lives of everyone he meets. The recounting of his illicit affair with an older colleague reveals a young man unprepared for the emotional entanglements that come with love. Tom's father, Stuart, struggles to reconcile Tom's splendor with his shortcomings, as he watches his only child fail to live up to expectations. A young couple befriends an unsuspecting Tom, attempting to extract the very qualities others find so alluring about him. For an aging tennis partner, Tom serves as a lens through which the man is able to understand his early years of fatherhood. A girlfriend, enamored by Tom, attempts to isolate him, with shocking consequences.
As the mythology surrounding Tom grows richer, Tom struggles to understand what exactly has eluded him, and in stories that grow increasingly desperate and heartbreaking, we begin to see that being an icon is not all it's cracked up to be. In this haunting short story collection, Peter Levine offers a portrait of a hero for the twenty-first century, a man whose legend is constructed not by himself but by those around him, all desperate for someone to idolize.
Tom Mahoney is the golden boy everyone knew in school: good-looking, charming, an athlete---sought after by women, the envy of men. His success in life seems a foregone conclusion. In The Appearance of a Hero, Tom navigates the passage into adulthood, his story chronicled from every perspective but his own.
Tom crisscrosses the country in search of direction, affecting the lives of everyone he meets. The recounting of his illicit affair with an older colleague reveals a young man unprepared for the emotional entanglements that come with love. Tom's father, Stuart, struggles to reconcile Tom's splendor with his shortcomings, as he watches his only child fail to live up to expectations. A young couple befriends an unsuspecting Tom, attempting to extract the very qualities others find so alluring about him. For an aging tennis partner, Tom serves as a lens through which the man is able to understand his early years of fatherhood. A girlfriend, enamored by Tom, attempts to isolate him, with shocking consequences.
As the mythology surrounding Tom grows richer, Tom struggles to understand what exactly has eluded him, and in stories that grow increasingly desperate and heartbreaking, we begin to see that being an icon is not all it's cracked up to be. In this haunting short story collection, Peter Levine offers a portrait of a hero for the twenty-first century, a man whose legend is constructed not by himself but by those around him, all desperate for someone to idolize.
About the author
PETER LEVINE earned his M.F.A. from The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere. He has held residencies at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
