You Poor Monster: or This Should Answer Your Questions, My Son

A young Baltimore lawyer is thrown into an ugly divorce proceeding and finds himself befriending his client, the charming and generous Sam Shoogey. Shoogey is a former war hero, college football star, professional boxer and novelist. Or is he? As more and more of Shoogey's sweet and funny tales unravel, the narrator unexpectedly finds himself drawn even more to Shoogey, posing the question, "Is a lie a lie if you know it's untrue, or is it just a story?"

Kun again plays with the form and function of the English language to tell a captivating story in a new way with a combination of humor and tragedy. Readers themselves will become characters in the book when they are swept up in fantastical elements that make Kun’s characters so real.

Michael Kun is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and University of Virginia School of Law. His first novel, A Thousand Benjamins, was published to much acclaim in 1990. After a silence of thirteen years, he returned with his second novel, The Locklear Letters, which was a BookSense selection and was chosen by Amazon.com as a "Breakout Book" and My Wife and Dead Wife in 2004. He lives and works in Los Angeles.