Synopses & Reviews
Each story in this crystalline, spare, oddly moving collection cuts to the quick. Taylor's characters are guided by delusions and misapprehensions that quickly bring them to impasses with reality. Moving through this collection the reader will meet a young man who has reasoned away certain boundaries in relation to his budding, girl cousin; a high schooler whose desire to win back his crush leads him to experiment with goth magic; a man whose girlfriend is stolen by angels; and a Tetris player who, as the advancing white wall of the Apocalypse slowly churns up his driveway, decides that Death is a kindness.
Fearless and funny, Taylor imagines this and more, in a collection that paints a dark picture of his generation — one that is upwardly mobile yet adrift, fumbling for connection but hopelessly self-involved. And it's all held together by a thread of wounding humor and candid storytelling that marks Taylor as a distinct and emerging literary talent.
Review
"Taylor flirts with poetic language, teasing us with lines so lusciously packed that even a tattoo's description can set the page on fire." Bookslut
Review
"Justin Taylor does irony and snark and thwarted idealism uncommonly well." Huffington Post
Review
"These short fictions by Justin Taylor give such a convincing account of the rough crossing of young adulthood that they practically induce seasickness. For his youthful protagonists, identity — emotional, intellectual, sexual — is unstable, constantly in motion." Boston Globe
Review
"Justin Taylor is a master of the modern snapshot." Los Angeles Times
About the Author
Justin Taylor's fiction and nonfiction have been widely published in journals, magazines, and Web sites, including The Believer, the Nation, the New York Tyrant, the Brooklyn Rail, Flaunt, and NPR. A coeditor of The Agriculture Reader and a contributor to HTMLGIANT, Taylor lives in Brooklyn and is at work on his first novel.