Stay up with Me

“One of the most satisfying cover-to-cover short story collections I can remember.” —DAVE EGGERS, AUTHOR OF ZEITOUN

The stories in Tom Barbash’s evocative and often darkly funny collection explore the myriad ways we try to connect to one another and to the sometimes cruel world around us. The newly single mother in “The Break” interferes with her son’s love life over his Christmas break from college. The anxious young man in “Balloon Night” persists in hosting his and his wife’s annual watch-the-Macy’s-Thanksgiving-Day-Parade-floats-be-inflated party, while trying to keep the myth of his marriage equally afloat. “Somebody’s Son” tells the story of a young man guiltily conning an elderly couple out of their home in the Adirondacks,and the young narrator in “The Women” watches his newly widowed father become the toast of Manhattan’s mid-life dating scene, as he struggles to find his own footing.

The characters in Stay Up with Me find new truths when the old ones have shifted course, or given out. In the tradition of classic storywriters like John Cheever and Tobias Wolff, Barbash laces his narratives with sharp humour, psychological acuity and pathos, creating deeply resonant and engaging tales that pierce the heart and linger in the imagination.

Tom Barbash is the author of the award-winning novel, The Last Good Chance, which was was awarded the California Book Award, and the short story collection Stay Up With Me, which was a national bestseller and was nominated for the Folio Prize. His nonfiction book, On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal, was a New York Times bestseller. His stories and articles have been published in Tin House, McSweeney’s, VQR, and other publications, and have been performed on National Public Radio for their Selected Shorts Series. He currently teaches in the MFA program at California College of the Arts. He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and currently lives in Marin County.