Music Through the Floor: Stories

Includes a new story, "Body Language"!

Now in paperback, Eric Puchner's celebrated debut collection, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, established him as one of our most brilliant and promising new literary voices.

Writing from an impressive range of perspectives — men and women, children and adults, immigrants and tourists — Puchner deftly exposes the dark, tender undersides of his characters with arresting beauty and precision. Here are people fumbling for identity in a dehumanizing world, captured in moments that are hilarious, shocking, and transcendent, sometimes all at once. Unfailingly true, surprisingly moving, and impossible to forget, these stories make up an extraordinary and strikingly original collection.

From an acclaimed young Wallace Stegner Fellow and Pushcart Prize winner comes an exceptional first collection of stories about cultural outcasts attempting to navigate mainstream America.

Eric Puchner is an assistant professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College.  He has received a Pushcart Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.  His short story collection, Music Through the Floor, was a finalist for the NY Public Library’s Young Lions Award.  He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Katharine Noel, and their children.

Contents

Children of God

Essay #3: Leda and the Swan

Child's Play

Diablo

Neon Tetra

Legends

A Fear of Invisible Tribes

Animals Here Below

Mission