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    Little Birds: A short story from The Secret Lives of People A short story from The Secret Lives of People in Love
    Little Birds: A short story from The Secret Lives of People A short story from The Secret Lives of People in Love
    Little Birds: A short story from The Secret Lives of People A short story from The Secret Lives of People in Love
    Ebook34 pages38 minutes

    Little Birds: A short story from The Secret Lives of People A short story from The Secret Lives of People in Love

    By Simon Van Booy

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    About this ebook

    The Secret Lives of People in Love is the first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect synthesis of intensity and atmosphere. Love, loss, human contact, and isolation are Van Booy's themes. In radiant prose he writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world.

    Included in this updated P.S. edition is the new story "The Mute Ventriloquist."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 23, 2010
    ISBN9780062001948
    Little Birds: A short story from The Secret Lives of People A short story from The Secret Lives of People in Love
    Author

    Simon Van Booy

    Simon Van Booy is the author of two novels and two collections of short stories, including The Secret Lives of People in Love and Love Begins in Winter, which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. He is the editor of three philosophy books and has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and the BBC. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

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    Book preview

    Little Birds - Simon Van Booy

    Little Birds

    A short story from The Secret Lives of People in Love

    Simon Van Booy

    Dedication

    To Maddie

    Contents

    Dedication

    Little Birds

    Acknowledgments

    An Excerpt from Tales of Accidental Genius

    About the Author

    Praise

    Credits

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    LITTLE BIRDS

    This morning I woke up and was fifteen years old. Each year is like putting a new coat over all the old ones. Sometimes I reach into the pockets of my childhood and pull things out.

    When Michel gets home from his shop he said we are going out to celebrate—maybe to a movie or the McDonald’s on boulevard Voltaire. Michel is not my real father. He grew up in Paris and did a spell in prison. I think he was used to being alone, but we’ve lived together so long now, I’m not sure he could survive without me.

    We live in Paris, and I think I was born here, but I may never know for sure. Everyone thinks I’m Chinese, and I look Chinese, but Michel says I’m more French than bread.

    It is the afternoon of my birthday, but still the morning of my life. I am walking on the Pont des Arts. It is a small wooden bridge, and Americans sit in colorful knots drinking wine. Even though I’m only fifteen and have not had a girlfriend as such, I can tell who is in love with who when I look at people.

    A woman in a wheelchair is being pushed across the bridge by her husband. They are in love. Only the back wheels move across each plank. He tilts the chair toward him as though his body is drinking from hers. I wish he could see her face. She clings to a small cloud of tissue. They look Eastern European. I can tell this because they are well dressed but their clothes are years out of style. I’d like to think

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