In the Event of Contact: Stories - Softcover

Rohan, Ethel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1950539261 ISBN 13: 9781950539260

Publisher: Dzanc Books, 2021

Synopsis

In the Event of Contact chronicles characters profoundly affected by physical connection, or its lack. Among them, a scrappy teen vies to be the next Sherlock Holmes; an immigrant daughter must defend her decision to remain childless; a guilt-ridden woman is haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend; a cantankerous crossing guard celebrates getting run over by a truck; an embattled priest with dementia determines to perform a heroic, redemptive act, if he can only remember how; and a young girl navigates crippling aversion to touch, even from her sisters. Amid backgrounds of trespass and absence, the indelible characters of In the Event of Contact seek renewed belief in recovery, humanity, and the remains of wonder.

About this title

About the Author

Ethel Rohan is the author of In the Event of Contact, winner of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize (2021). Her debut novel The Weight of Him (St. Martin's Press and Atlantic Books, 2017) was an Amazon, Bustle, KOBO, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book, and was shortlisted for the Reading Women Award. She is also the author of the story collections Goodnight Nobody and Cut Through the Bone, the former longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the latter longlisted for the Story Prize. Her work has appeared widely, including The New York Times, World Literature Today, The Washington Post, PEN America, Tin House, Guernica, and more. Raised in Ireland, she lives in San Francisco where she is a member of the Writers Grotto.

From the Back Cover

"This is a terrific collection; each story is its own thing, gripping, powerful and very moving." --RODDY DOYLE

"Spare, haunting, and mesmerizing, the stories in In the Event of Contact somehow capture the ungraspable essence of being human. This book, these characters, put a spell on me." --Diane Cook, author of the Booker finalist THE NEW WILDERNESS

"In this amazing collection, Rohan traces the determined spirit of the hopeful; how we seek to connect and anchor so as not to capsize in life's treacherous waves. What an elegant, telling, gorgeous book." --Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of THE CHILD FINDER

"Rohan's stories are small electric shocks of discovery. Here, she writes about how love and wonder can coexist right alongside betrayal, danger, rage. How can such a collection be both unsettling and redemptive? How can any of us tease out light in our darkness? Rohan's alchemy points the way." --Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of PICTURES OF YOU

"These characters long for connections that keep eluding them: they feel so much and yet can touch so little. Their tragedies and resilience are brilliantly various and individual--none alike, and none exactly like ours--but they speak to the universal through the particular as only art can manage. A tremendous achievement."
--Clare Beams, author of THE ILLNESS LESSON

"A remarkable collection of understated yet powerful stories about people who trespass, and are trespassed against. Rohan writes with such sensitivity and compassion, and long after I was done reading, I kept thinking about her characters and how uniquely she gave witness to their complicated lives and private pain." --Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of CALIFORNIA

From the Inside Flap

"Beautiful, startling, disarming, and honest, In the Event of Contact is disquieting and compelling in equal measure." --Danielle McLaughlin, author of THE ART OF FALLING

"Each of these stories is beautifully-written, wise and wry; read as a collection, their cumulative effect is gently devastating. With the lightest hand, Ethel Rohan has delivered a meditation on what it is to be human: surrounded by people, quite alone and perpetually craving connection." --Louise Kennedy, author of THE END OF THE WORLD IS A CUL DE SAC (less)

Edition details

• Publisher: Dzanc Books
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1950539261
• ISBN 13: 9781950539260
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180