Fear of Blue Skies Hardback - 1998

Fear of Blue Skies, Richard Burgin's third collection of stories, explores the mysteries of love and memory, sex, revenge and redemption, family abuse and forgiveness, through an extraor-dinarily variegated cast of characters. In these pages one finds vivid renderings of prostitutes, artists, and businessmen, the famous and wealthy and the homeless and tormented, as well as those who seek and find enlightenment.

Fear of Blue Skies is Richard Burgin's most ambitious story collection to date, exploring the form and narrative structure of the story as well as the psyches of his protagonists and their sometimes searing, sometimes comic visions of the world. It confirms what Robert Taylor of the Boston Globe said of Private Fame: "Richard Burgin's tales capture the strangeness of a world that is simultaneously frightening and reassuring, and in the contemporary American short story nothing quite resembles his singular voice."

Praise for Richard Burgin and his work:

"Finely balanced fictions... Masterly... Private Fame offers a thrill ride for anyone willing to explore the dark alleyways of the modern American psyche." -- Philip Herter, Philadelphia Inquirer

"Richard Burgin, who edits the estimable quarterly Boulevard, is emerging as one of our most original story-writers." -- Robert Phillips, Southern Review

"The motley psyches in Mr. Burgin's gallery expose themselves in eerily funny monologues... But it is not their strangeness alone that fascinates, for strangeness generally fascinates only temporarily. Rather, it is the way they twist messages from a saner world to fit their peculiar neuroses. And this is why Mr. Burgin's stories are so dexterous. In them, he has paused near a border, shifting his weight nervously, sizing up the wild, surrealistic landscape that lies just a few paces ahead." -- Susan Spano Wells, New York Times Book Review