The Glory of Living
A Play
ISBN10: 0571199984
ISBN13: 9780571199983
Trade Paperback
96 Pages
$15.00
CA$20.50
Winner of Britain's Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright in 1999
Set in the rural deep South, The Glory of Living focuses on fifteen-year-old Lisa, the daughter of a prostitute, and Clint, the car thief she runs away with to escape the misery of life with her mother. But the happier times that sullenly childlike Lisa yearns for never materialize, as Clint orders her to procure young runaways for him. No one notices that these teenage girls are missing until an anonymous call to the police reports their murders. Could the caller—and the killer—be Lisa? Gilman has created a riveting, unsentimental portrait of a young woman whose most striking quality is not her capacity for evil but the depth of her emptiness, in an environment as harsh and unyielding as the contours of her life.
Reviews
Praise for The Glory of Living
"Plays don't come much tougher, or more compassionate . . . Gilman's dramatic strength is that she provides the evidence and leaves us to form our own conclusions."—Michael Billington, The Guardian
"Powerful . . . Gilman's writing is enormously compelling."—Sarah Hemming, Financial Times