Here for your leisure reading consideration are three new short story collections: Other People We Married: stories(M) by Emma Straub Straub’s collection of short stories is a resplendent debut, arriving in a whirl of buzz, thanks to her appearances in Tin House, the Paris Review, and Slate. Heir to Ann Beattie and Lorrie Moore, Straub evinces marvelous literary confidence in her deadpan hilarity, eye for redolent details, and acute psychological insights… Straub’s stories glow and pulse and, like sea anemones, are far more complex and dangerous than their bright and beckoning appearances suggest. – Booklist Straub’s stories go down easy, like a remembered conversation with a wise and witty friend. In her debut collection, she establishes characters and situations that feel immediately familiar and draw one in from the start. Many of her first sentences read like overheard dialog from the couple at the next table at the local bistro, but in this case one gets the chance to learn the delicious context. – Library Journal “Read this book and alert the twitteratti: E STRAUB IS GR8 RITR!” – Pittsburg Post-Gazette
Stay Awake: stories(M) by Dan Chaon “Before the critically acclaimed novels Await Your Reply and You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon made a name for himself as a renowned writer of dazzling short stories. Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award. In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection–and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations.” – Publisher “Chaon brings readers fantastically close, slowly drawing them into the anxiety or loneliness or remorse of his characters, and building great anticipation for the twists to come.” – Publisher’s Weekly “The powerful writing in this intense and suspenseful collection draws us into the emotional maelstroms experienced by the characters. A highly recommended work, not to be missed. ” – Library Journal
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank(M) by Nathan Englander “These eight new stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction. “- Publisher “The sense comes easily that Englander, author of the celebrated short story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (1999) and the absorbing novel The Ministry of Special Cases (2007), will always favor the short story form. In his new collection, the reader feels the musculature beneath the skin of his short fiction and keenly appreciates that this is where his supreme power lies. Englander is his own writer. One may think of, say, Bernard Malamud as a possible influence, but which masters, if any, guided him in the early stages of his career have been bid adieu, as Englander sails his own personally mapped seas. His plots are richly developed, and traditional short story techniques are used only when suitable.” – Library Journal
