Death Is Not an Option: Stories - Softcover

Rivecca, Suzanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393339904 ISBN 13: 9780393339901

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

Synopsis

“Ruthlessly frank. . . . Recalls Holden Caulfield by way of John Hughes.”―The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

In these stories, a teacher obsesses over a student who comes to class with scratch marks on his face; a Catholic girl graduating high school finds a warped kind of redemption in her school’s contrived class rituals; and a woman looking to rent a house is sucked into a strangely inappropriate correspondence with one of the landlords. These are just a few of the powerful plotlines in Suzanne Rivecca’s gorgeously wrought collection. From a college student who adopts a false hippie persona to find love, to a young memoirist who bumps up against a sexually obsessed fan, the characters in these fiercely original tales grapple with what it means to be honest with themselves and the world.

These stories explode “with piercing insight . . . illuminating the dangerous dance between victims and saviors. [They] deliver us to the edge of grief, that precarious place where the moral compass spins―where codes of love and law and religion fail. Mercy here depends on a tiger’s sublime grace, our capacity to resist deeper harm, and the right of every broken being to remain silent” (Melanie Rae Thon).

About this title

About the Author

Suzanne Rivecca’s fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices 2009, among other publications. A winner of the Pushcart Prize and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she lives in San Francisco.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393339904
• ISBN 13: 9780393339901
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 226