So Late in the Day is brilliantly written with Keegan’s beautiful prose. The underlying theme in the stories is the fractured relationships between a man and woman, told with a nuanced tension that grips the reader from beginning until end. A quietly delightful, tense, and gripping read.
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan, (List Price: $20, Grove Press, 9780802160850, November 2023)
Reviewed by Kelley Barnes, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina
Picking up the same one-to-three-page story by Lydia Davis ten times gives the reader ten different experiences, like taking a plate of gourmet food from a fussy child with her right hand, passing it behind her back to the left hand and returning it to the child saying “fine, eat your magic boopie beans” to the child’s ravenous delight. And the beauty of a book full of one-to-three-page, multidimensional gems is that you’ve got a book jam-packed with multidimensional gems.
Our Strangers by Lydia Davis, (List Price: 26, Bookshop Editions, 9798987717103, October 2023)
Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
This collection feels so alive. It’s not just the memorable characters set spinning toward questionable ventures, it’s the sense of play and fun that pervades each story, each line. In never taking any moment too seriously, Vara accomplishes the serious work of truth-telling that actually feels true.
This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara, (List Price: $26.95, W. W. Norton & Company, 9780393541731, September 2023)
Reviewed by Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama
Describing this as “the paperback that swallowed the phone” makes sense because reading this with no comprehension of the current state of existence of being Online for people age 21 to 30 would be like reading the late-night musings of a particularly nihilist alien. Cash manages to satirize the seemingly non-satirical by pinpointing the weirdness of current existence and just rolling with it. Destroying your sister’s leg to give her a better choice at a beauty competition? Yea sounds right. A terrorist org getting an image makeover by advertising that they’re body positive? Sure why not. The other day I saw a tiktok where the ai voices of Biden and Obama were arguing foreign policy while playing Overwatch. Nothing is real!
Earth Angel by Madeline Cash, (List Price: 16.95, CLASH Books, 9781955904698, April 2023)
Reviewed by Ndobe Foletia, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Arrow-sharp and unsentimental renderings of some deeply emotional experiences, all centering unique experiences across the Latin American diaspora, but certainly focusing on individuals who have moved to the US. Engel is a brilliant writer. Her stories snap tight with tension, but she’s also deft at stirring up soft spots and infusing her plots with fairy tale-like twists.
The Faraway World by Patricia Engel, (List Price: $26, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 9781982159528, January 2023)
Reviewed by Adah Fitzgerald, Main Street Books in Davidson, North Carolina
“I think urban legends, myths and folktales constantly tell us that what you know is not all, and you shouldn’t be arrogant enough to think that what your five senses can sense is all there is to feel and perceive and think.” ―Bora Chung, Interview, The Korea Herald
What booksellers are saying about Cursed Bunny: Stories
About Bora Chung
Bora Chung has written three novels and three collections of short stories. She has an MA in Russian and East European area studies from Yale University and a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She has taught Russian language and literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University and translates modern literary works from Russian and Polish into Korean.
Anton Hur was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He won a PEN Translates award for Kang Kyeong-ae’s The Underground Village and his translation of Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City was longlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2022. He lives in Seoul.
“I started this book in Argentina many years ago, knowing I would move to Europe soon, and finished it during my first couple of years living in Berlin. So for me it works as a bridge between two very different worlds and lives. I couldn’t see that during the writing process, but these stories are full of moving boxes, abandoned clothes, lost objects, people feeling nostalgic and lost or out of place, even when the plots have little to do with that. How tricky fiction can be…I thought I had hidden my private life behind these stories, but it doesn’t matter what I am writing about, I’m always working with material taken from my own life and experience.” ―Samanta Schweblin, Interview, Words Without Borders, National Book Awards
What booksellers are saying about Seven Empty Houses
About Samanta Schweblin
Samanta Schweblin is the author of the novel Fever Dream, a finalist for the International Booker Prize, and the novel Little Eyes and story collection A Mouthful of Birds, longlisted for the same prize. Chosen by Granta as one of the twenty-two best writers in Spanish under the age of thirty-five, she has won numerous prestigious awards around the world. Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages, and her work has appeared in English in The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine. Originally from Buenos Aires, Schweblin lives in Berlin.
Megan McDowell has translated books by many contemporary South American and Spanish authors; her translations have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Words Without Borders, and Vice, among other publications.
This powerhouse collection of stories brings to vivid life the experiences of a diverse cast of (mostly) women of (mostly) Jamaican descent around the world, from Florida to France to 1950s London to 1960s Panama and beyond. The very first story, “Florida Lives,” about a Black couple who move from San Francisco to Florida only to suffer from the heat, some bats, and their tacky neighbors, is blazoned on my mind and I don’t think I’m ever going to stop thinking about it (or look at tacky neighbors the same way ever again). These stories movingly explore identity, belonging, and home all through the complexities of the Jamaican diaspora, immigration, assimilation, colonialism, racism, sexism, and class—all through a vivid cast of characters who will remain on your mind long after each story ends. I’m not a big short story reader, but this is truly a must-read collection and highly recommended for fans of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies!
The Islands by Dionne Irving, (List Price: $16.95, Catapult, 9781646220663, November 2022)
Reviewed by Megan Bell, Underground Books in Carrollton, Georgia
This collection of occasionally-interlinking stories simmers with personalities hardened by the harsh wilderness, by the survival of the everyday and the illusion of escape. Some of the stories connect to follow a character from childhood through adulthood while others follow young women into motherhood, one frenetic event building into the next and illuminating a range of once-peripheral characters alongside them. The effect is absorbing, an abstract portrait of a community shaped by their landscape, remote and reckless, fissured and cruel and coping.
Nobody Gets Out Alive : Stories by Leigh Newman, (List Price: $26.99, Scribner, 9781982180300, April 2022)
Reviewed by Miranda Sanchez, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
A September 2022 Read This Next! Title
Jonathan Escoffery’s debut If I Survive You chronicles an American immigration story full of hope, heartbreak, promises broken, and most importantly the constant struggle. Told in interconnected stories, If I Survive You addresses class, race, and economic disparity but is also funny. Mark my words, Escoffery is a rising literary star.
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, (List Price: $27.00, MCD, 9780374605988, September 2022)
Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
An August 2022 Read This Next! Title
Sidik Fofana’s first book is a series of connected stories written from the perspectives of the tenants of a residential building in Harlem. The chapters in Stories From the Tenants Downstairs are solely unique as each tenant’s struggles with rising rent cause different outcomes and each person tells their story in different formats and styles. This book shines a light on what millions of Americans are experiencing today: the exhausting, funny, desperate, and hopeful human experience.
Stories from The Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana, (List Price: $26.00, Riverhead Books, 9781982145811, August 2022)
Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
Murata, author of the 2016 indie hit Convenience Store Woman, is back with a collection of weird and weirdly relatable short stories. Cannibalism! Alien bodies! Distant worlds! Getting older, and more alone! These and other strange subjects are blown up to speak about the fundamental problems of living today. I especially loved "Hatchling," a story reminiscent of Osamu Dazai’s classic "No Longer Human," but with a feminist sensibility. Life Ceremony further cements Sayaka Murata as one of the world’s most interesting contemporary writers.
Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata, (List Price: $25, Grove Press, 9780802159588, July 2022)
Reviewed by Conor Hultman, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi
Holy cow, I love this ‘un! I saw in Ben Fountain’s preface that the author discovered Donald Barthelme during a stint in a Texas prison (marijuana, meh.). Well, I discovered DB while dumpster diving, broke and living in an attic in Tallahassee, so dingdingding I checked it out! The title story reads like a great conspiracy zine from the 70s, about JFK’s assassination (including Jack Ruby’s shooting of Oswald) all being one elaborate work of performance art created by Ruby to introduce internationally acclaimed avant-garde art to stingy Dallas. But that’s just a preview for the main attraction. The bulk of the book is around 20 short stories that all revolve, in some way, around a beer bar (you want liquor, you gotta bring it yourself). The bar is a safe-ish haven in the belly of the beast (1960s Dallas) that lives in the mouth of the king of beasts (anytime Texas). Every style of story lives inside this collection. I’d say it’s equal parts Donald Barthelme, Terry Allen and W.G. Sebald. It comes out in November and I will be talking this one up a ship ton! That’s right: tonnage is different on ships. A ship ton different!
Jack Ruby and the Origins of the Avant-Garde in Dallas by Robert Trammell, (List Price: $16.95, Deep Vellum Publishing, 9781646050499, December 2021)
Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
A Fall Read This Next! Selection
I enjoyed every word in these brilliantly-written stories. Each story offered warm and immersive portraits of real, layered characters. Original, literary, human, and peppered with heart wrenching, high-stakes moments that jolt the reader’s emotions in the best way possible. A wonderful collection.
Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King, (List Price: 27, Grove Press, 9780802158765, November 2021)
Reviewed by Melissa Summers from Main Street Books in Davidson, NC
Each story in Hao pulses with life—with all its pain and beauty—and the power of language to transform it. They all, in a way, revolve around Chinese women past and present and their entanglements with motherhood, migration, and trauma. Ye’s prose is searingly honest, paying close attention to those tiny gaps in relationships where loneliness and love reside, and the ways in which we try to bridge those gulfs with communication. Both meditative and fierce, these stories will hold your heart long after you close the book.
Hao by Ye Chun, (List Price: 26, Catapult, 9781646220601, September 2021)
Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
