The stories in this remarkable debut collection explore the relationships we have with ourselves as well as those we have with others, and what we think about when we think we are alone. In the title story, a hospital bed-bound convalescent begins a mono

In a spare, elegant style, Pritchard portrays loneliness and dissociation in characters of all ages and walks of life in this remarkable debut collection. These stories explore the anomie that pervades modern life, something that deeply affects the characters who populate the unsettling worlds Pritchard has invented. The nameless narrator of Homage to Swega has an unusual ritual he must always do while flying on an airplane to ensure that his flight lands safely; in Reginald Used the Subjunctive Today, Father O'Mallon struggles to protect and educate wayward boys in a post-apocalyptic, post-grammatical world; and in Contact, tour guide and tour director from different countries might speak the same languages, but they do not understand each other at all.