About this item
A riveting novel about the aftermath of a brutal murder of three teenage girls, written in incantatory prose "that's as fine as any being written by an American author today." (Ben Fountain) One autumn evening in a Texas town, two strangers walk into an ice cream shop shortly before closing time. They bind up the three teenage girls behind the counter, set fire to the shop, and disappear. SEE HOW SMALL tells the stories of the survivors--family, witnesses, and suspects--who must endure in the wake of atrocity. Hovering above the aftermath of their deaths are the three girls. They watch over the town, trying to connect with and prod to life those they left behind. "See how small a thing it is that keeps us apart," they say. A master of compression and lyrical precision, Scott Blackwood has surpassed himself with this haunting, beautiful, and enormously powerful novel.
About the Author
Scott Blackwood is the author of three books of fiction, including the forthcoming novel SEE HOW SMALL (Little Brown and Company and HarperCollins U.K. 2015) . Blackwood was a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award recipient and his first novel, WE AGREED TO MEET JUST HERE, set in the Deep Eddy Neighborhood of Austin, Texas, won the AWP Prize for the Novel, Texas Institute of Letters Award for best work of fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. His first book was the award-winning story collection, IN THE SHADOW OF OUR HOUSE, published in 2001. His other two books of narrative nonfiction - produced by musician Jack White and featured on NPR's Weekend Edition, Sound Opinions, and Charlie Rose - tell the curious tale of the rise and fall of the first wildly successful "Race music" label, Paramount Records, whose early recordings of Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Alberta Hunter, Fletcher Henderson, Son House, Skip James, and Charley Patton accidentally changed the face of American music and culture. Blackwood, a long time resident of Austin, Texas, currently lives in Chicago and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. More information can be found about his books and background at
