Other People We Married - Softcover

Straub, Emma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594486069 ISBN 13: 9781594486067

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2012

Synopsis

The beloved story collection from the New York Times-bestselling author of The Vacationers, All Adults Here and This Time Tomorrow

In Other People We Married, Straub creates characters as recognizable as a best friend, and follows them through moments of triumph and transformation with wit, vulnerability, and dazzling insight. In “Some People Must Really Fall in Love,” an assistant professor takes halting steps into the awkward world of office politics while harboring feelings for a freshman student. Two sisters struggle with old assumptions about each other as they stumble to build a new relationship in “A Map of Modern Palm Springs.” In “Puttanesca,” two widows move tentatively forward, still surrounded by ghosts and disappointments from the past. These twelve stories, filled with sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language, announce the arrival of a major new talent.

About this title

About the Author

Emma Straub is the New York Times‒bestselling author of Modern Lovers, The Vacationers, and Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Elle, and Condé Nast Traveler, and she is a contributing writer for Rookie. Straub's work has been published in fifteen countries.

Reviews

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. She also excels at the art of sudden reversals as she takes measure of the unbridgeable gaps that divide us and the leaps that save us. The deeply involving title story is one of several featuring magnetic Franny Gold, whose entanglements cause equal degrees of bliss and anguish. Elsewhere, three young college English professors share a tiny office, and two very different sisters make the mistake of vacationing together. In the standout, Abraham’s Enchanted Forest, a teenage daughter assesses her life with her hippie parents, who run a funky roadside attraction. In the wistful, funny, and unnerving Fly-Over State, a New Yorker comes undone in Wisconsin. Straub’s stories glow and pulse and, like sea anemones, are far more complex and dangerous than their bright and beckoning appearances suggest. --Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594486069
• ISBN 13: 9781594486067
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240