Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones"
    A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones"
    A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones"
    Ebook36 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535839624
    A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones"

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 21, 2017

      The book I’ve read the most this year is Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño. I read a few pages from it every morning before I crawl across the floor to my desk. It’s Bolaño distilled. It’s a crime story, a death story, a sex story, a love story, but always i

      2 min read

    • Article

      Unafraid Of The Dark

      Mar 27, 2018

      SOME YEARS AGO, in a workshop, I wrote about my sister’s self-destructive adolescence. I recounted her recklessness with boys and alcohol, the anger that erupted like a geyser inside her, and her hell-bent desire to run away—which she did by joining

      10 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jesse Paddock

      Dec 9, 2020

      I’d gotten what I’d wanted—a room full of books and time enough to read them—but at a cost. The post A Year in Reading: Jesse Paddock appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Time Is Now Writing Prompts and Exercises

      Feb 17, 2021

      Suggested Reading: Who Says? Mastering Point of View in Fiction (Norton, February 2021) by Lisa Zeidner An in-depth examination of one of the most critical choices fac ing writers of fict ion, novelist Lisa Zeidner’s craft manual includes hundreds of

      2 min read

    • Article

      Re-Covered: The Mischief

      Dec 2, 2019

      Re-Covered: The Mischief
      8 min read

    • Article

      Melting Pot: Vietnamese Family Settles In New Orleans

      Jul 19, 2021

      “Things We Lost to the Water” transposes Vietnamese refugee tale to New Orleans, where a single mother writes notes to her absent husband.

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Sarah Thankam Mathews

      Dec 18, 2020

      By May I was clenching my teeth so hard when I slept that it eventually cracked a filling. The post A Year in Reading: Sarah Thankam Mathews appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      HOW I WRITE Maggie O’Farrell

      Mar 5, 2020

      Maggie O’Farrell is the author of seven books, including The Hand That First Held Mine , which won a Costa Book Award. Her latest historical novel,  Hamnet, is the thrilling story behind Shakespeare’s famous play. Nothing prepared me for how disorie

      1 min read

    • Article

      Jenny Diski's Curious Women

      Jan 25, 2018

      Jenny Diski's Curious Women
      5 min read

    • Article

      Where To Start With: Zadie Smith

      May 27, 2022

      Zadie Smith made a splash in the literary scene at the turn of the millennium with her debut novel White Teeth. She has since written everything from short stories to playscripts, and made headlines earlier this year when she sang with the BBC Sympho

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Julie Orringer's "The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones" - Gale

      1

      The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones

      Julie Orringer

      2003

      Introduction

      The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones by Julie Orringer was first published in the literary magazine, Zoetrope: All Story, in 2003. It was reprinted in Orringer's first collection of short stories, How to Breathe Underwater (2003). Orringer has been widely praised for her ability to convey the trials and tribulations of adolescent girls, as well as their ability to emerge successfully from the challenges they face. In The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones a young Jewish girl from New York named Rebecca goes to stay for the summer with Esty, her cousin. Esty and her family are members of a Hasidic sect that has strict religious beliefs and practices which are quite new to Rebecca, who has been raised in a secular environment. As the summer wears on, Rebecca has to deal with her developing awareness of religion and God, as well as her emerging sexuality. These issues come together one hot July Shabbos and are connected with a forbidden book and the disturbing presence of an attractive young man.

      Author Biography

      Julie Orringer was born on June 12, 1973, in Miami, Florida. Both her parents were third-year medical students at the University of Miami. When Orringer was four, the family lived in Boston. When she was six, they moved to New Orleans, where she lived until she was twelve. She attended a private school, and being one of the few Jewish children in the class, she felt like an outsider. She loved reading and writing and thought she might like to write novels someday.

      In 1986, the family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Orringer attended a public school from eighth grade. The book that most influenced her at the time was Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, which she read in high school. During Orringer's school years, her mother was fighting a long battle with breast cancer, the disease that eventually killed her. Orringer says this experience gave her an early awareness that she might lose her mother, and this feeling of insecurity, loss, and the possibility of death has colored her stories.

      Orringer attended Cornell University, where some of

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1