Tudish, Catherine 1952-

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Tudish, Catherine 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born August 3, 1952.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Strafford, VT.

CAREER:

Journalist and writer. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, writing and literature instructor, c. 1981-89; instructor at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and Dartmouth College.

WRITINGS:

Tenney's Landing: Stories, Scribner (New York, NY), 2005.

American Cream (novel), Scribner (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Catherine Tudish taught writing and literature at Harvard University for eight years before moving to Vermont to work as a journalist. Her first book, Tenney's Landing: Stories, is a series of nine related stories about a town in Pennsylvania and the people who live there. In the prologue, Tudish traces the history of Fort Duquesne, founded by fur trappers and soldiers from the French and Indian War. The citizens of nearby Tenney's Landing are the characters of her stories and include Elizabeth Tenney, who in "Where the Devil Lost His Blanket" accompanies the body of her neighbor when it is transported to Colombia. A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that "rendered in graceful prose and abounding with epiphanies, Tudish's stories make a lovely, mournful, collection." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the book "a collection as eerily hard to sound as are its characters, heartfelt yet with plenty of puzzling white space." Booklist contributor Carol Haggas found the book a "dazzling debut." Haggas commented that "Tudish displays a pleasingly sublime combination of generously developed characters and scrupulously detailed settings." Margot Harrison, writing on the Seven Days Web site, noted that "Tudish's writing evokes inevitable comparisons to that of acclaimed Canadian author Alice Munro. Besides their rural settings, both authors proceed at a leisurely pace, meticulously detailing lives of backbreaking chores and small pleasures." Harrison noted that "Tudish doesn't fully share Munro's ability to draw a vivid, satisfying romanticism from the everyday…. But Tudish's stories explore a wider range of character types than Munro's. She traces the fault lines of class and status difference in Tenney's Landing with aplomb, refusing to idealize her setting."

Tudish published her first novel, American Cream, in 2007. Returning to the Tenney's Landing of her previous publication, Tudish introduces Virginia Rownd, a woman who returns to the family farm to help run it after her father is injured in a tractor accident. Virginia, who brings her thirteen-year-old son with her to help, still feels bitter over her father's expedited marriage shortly after her mother's death. Virginia now must face her father, her new stepmother, and her reality.

John Freitag, writing in the Herald of Randolph, Vermont, noted that "with its short chapters, often written from different characters' points of view, American Cream is a great read for sleepy winter nights. However be warned—it may keep you up reading long after you should have turned off the light." Susan Salter Reynolds, writing in the Los Angeles Times, remarked that "Tudish lets her characters speak for themselves," adding that she "lets go just enough to make these people real instead of treating them like children, or worse, paper figures." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews described the novel as "slow and character-clogged." The same critic wrote that the plot is "related at a turtle's pace" and the various subplots are "headed toward outcomes that are never in doubt." Haggas, again writing in Booklist, described the prologue as being "intensely poignant." Haggas also found the characters to be "endearingly earnest," adding that they "subtly reveal themselves through crystalline acts of grace and charity." A contributor to Publishers Weekly commented that "Tudish portrays a realistic world, yet Virginia's abrupt transformation … is at odds with the novel's unhurried pace."