conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Hunts in Dreams about Charles, Joan, Lyris with the genre: Literature & Fiction, United States.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Somewhere in the Midwest, the Darling family is in for an intricate and difficult transformation one October weekend, in the author's lyrically bleak but oddly hopeful third novel, which follows several of the characters of his praised The End of Vandalism. Charles (aka "Tiny"), a plumber who "would fix something in such a way that it would need fixing again soon," yearns to possess a vintage double-barreled shotgun once owned by his family and currently in the possession of a minister's widow. Charles's wife, Joan, is headed to Stone City for the weekend, to attend the animal shelter convention, but winds up having an affair with her egotistical doctor. This leaves Charles stuck with the kids, an overly imaginative seven-year-old son named Micah who thinks he can see ghosts, and Lyris, 16, the daughter Joan gave up for adoption at birth and who, after a succession of foster parents, now lives with the Darlings. Meanwhile, Charles's middle-aged brother, Jerry, has taken up with Lyris's teenage friend, and Lyris herself gets involved with a local miscreant and budding arsonist. Stark in its depiction of family life going nowhere, the novel (with its title inspired by Tennyson and its domestic drama reminiscent of Rick Moody's The Ice Storm) describes smalltowners who must compromise their unruly desires, and confront their failures and weaknesses. Charles, trapped in his well-meaning but blundering ways, may be able to defend Lyris's honor, but he cannot hold his family together. The children likewise do their best: Lyris is a scarred survivor who trusts no one, and young Micah invents playmates in a town devoid of excitement. Those who do manage to break out of their daily existence, like Joan, face the horrifying prospect of a life beyond the accepted pattern, where one finds not freedom but an abyss of confusion. the author portrays this potential unmooring with persuasive clarity. His gift for dead-on realism and unfussy dialogue reveals the humorous, edgy pathos of his characters and invests his story with the ambiguity of real life and the poignancy of unrealized dreams. Author tour. (May) <BR>Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first paragraph for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Hunts in Dreams
  He closed his eyes. How many test results did he see on a given day? "I did. I did. And they're nothing to worry about, as we say. Your swollen glands are just that — the temporary result of something."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Seeking to avoid publicity, the hospital offered the doctors jobs in an affiliated clinic in the depressed suburb of Hartvale. Only Mona Lomasney accepted the deal, for Hartvale was the sort of place that is a springboard to nowhere. Around this time the news made the papers, which called the doctors the morphine angels. In Hartvale, Mona worked with two other doctors. The clinic took up the ground floor of a former shoe factory beneath elevated railroad tracks, and Mona lived in an apartment upstairs.
  The cab driver folded the doctor's money and put it in a metal box. He opened his door and banged the bowl of his pipe on the door frame. "Listen, young people, don't be in this neighborhood after dark," he said.
  Mona Lomasney came to the door of her apartment, still in pajamas. She had an angular, high-boned face that must have been amazing in her youth. Even the beautiful have their problems, among them a longer way to fall. Mona held a pair of needle-nose pliers with those slick blue grips that are so satisfying to touch. Charles could not go near needle-nose pliers without getting blood blisters on his fingers. They were the only tool he refused to use.
  Mona laughed warily, pushing her curly brown hair over the shoulders of her striped pajamas. She looked as if she had not gotten a good night's sleep.
  They crowded into the bathroom and stood with their backs to a clawfoot tub. The toothbrush had fallen with the bristles up, but it was too far down for the pliers to reach. The sink was small; it would hardly hold enough water to rinse your face. A thin wafer of green soap rested on one of the porcelain sides.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A thin wafer of green soap rested on one of the porcelain sides. Only Mona Lomasney accepted the deal, for Hartvale was the sort of place that is a springboard to nowhere. Around this time the news made the papers, which called the doctors the morphine angels. In Hartvale, Mona worked with two other doctors. The clinic took up the ground floor of a former shoe factory beneath elevated railroad tracks, and Mona lived in an apartment upstairs.
  The cab driver folded the doctor's money and put it in a metal box. He opened his door and banged the bowl of his pipe on the door frame. "Listen, young people, don't be in this neighborhood after dark," he said.
  Mona Lomasney came to the door of her apartment, still in pajamas. She had an angular, high-boned face that must have been amazing in her youth. Even the beautiful have their problems, among them a longer way to fall. Mona held a pair of needle-nose pliers with those slick blue grips that are so satisfying to touch. Charles could not go near needle-nose pliers without getting blood blisters on his fingers. They were the only tool he refused to use.
  Mona laughed warily, pushing her curly brown hair over the shoulders of her striped pajamas. She looked as if she had not gotten a good night's sleep.
  They crowded into the bathroom and stood with their backs to a clawfoot tub. The toothbrush had fallen with the bristles up, but it was too far down for the pliers to reach. The sink was small; it would hardly hold enough water to rinse your face.Seeking to avoid publicity, the hospital offered the doctors jobs in an affiliated clinic in the depressed suburb of Hartvale.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They stayed out a little while longer. The goat lay on the porch, ears back, a placid silver form. Then the moon slipped below the trees and darkness welled over the house, the fields, the woods, and the road. A night bird called, a cat answered, yowling with a hunger that would never go away, and it was quiet.