Synopses & Reviews
"An exceptional debut...Funny and poignant, these stories are textured gems."--People (four-star critic's pick)The stories in this collection, along with Owen King's brilliant title novella set in Maine after the 2000 election, carry the weight of real emotion and revelation and showcase the impressive versatility of a rising talent.
An adolescent encounters a giant reptile in the unlikeliest of places, a rundown shopping mall; a baseball player in a fantastic 1930s Coney Island is assailed by the guilt of an illicit romance; a nineteenth-century itinerant dentist finds himself snowed in with a group of trappers for a long evening of primitive surgery and laughing gas reveries. The stories in this collection, along with King's brilliant title novella set in Maine after the 2000 election, carry the weight of real emotion and revelation and showcase the impressive versatility of a rising talent.
Review
"The title novella of King's first collection is its heart and soul: a powerful exploration of the flimsiness of political moral certainty....The novella...like all great storytelling, has real strength. Newcomer King is a talent to watch." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"An exceptional debut....Funny and poignant, these stories are textured gems." People (four-star critic's pick)
Review
"King possesses a rare understanding of the macabre side of our workaday lives....We're All in This Together has enough moments of crystalline insight into human folly to prove he's finding a voice and an artistic sensibility all his own." Andrew Ervin, The Washington Post
Review
"Owen King knows a thing or two about our yen for hate, and he has made it a potent subtext of his literary debut....Some day, when historians are frantically looking for artifacts of our Age of Hate, I think they will stumble upon We're all in this Together." Denver Post
Review
"[T]he novella is terrific; the accompanying stories less so [King's] is a voice well worth hearing....Read this book for the novella alone. It wouldn't have taken many more pages to have made it into a worthy first novel, and it shines with promise." Hartford Courant
Review
"Owen King manages to take all of these characters and their idiosyncratic lives and weave stories that are darkly hilarious, truthfully touching, and leave the reader in no doubt that we really are all in this together." San Antonio Express-News
Review
"Meaty enough for a novel though only of novella length, the title fiction is augmented by three striking short stories that showcase the imaginative range and versatility of the young author, Owen King." Boston Globe
Review
"We're All in This Together is hilarious and frequently bizarre but always somehow deeply sincere. Beneath the pyrotechnics of his incredible imagination, King never forgets that he's here to tell meaningful poignant stories." Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and About Grace
Review
"Owen King decisively stakes out his own territory with prose so imaginative and confident and well crafted, he seems to have been down to that midnight Delta crossroads and gotten much the best of the bargain." William Gay, author of Provinces of Night and The Long Home
Review
"A distinctive voice and wry sense of humor." Time.com
Review
"Growing pains collide with political disappointments which ricochet off affairs of the heart in Owen King's marvelous novella We're All in This Together. With a cast of quirky characters worthy of Anne Tyler and John Irving, this story of familial devotion and betrayal is hilariously funny, devastating, and heartbreaking....The companion stories each terrific and imaginative, eerie and tender complete this introduction to a remarkable new writer." Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
Synopsis
An adolescent encounters a giant reptile in the unlikeliest of places, a rundown shopping mall; a baseball player in a fantastic 1930s Coney Island is assailed by the guilt of an illicit romance; a nineteenth-century itinerant dentist finds himself snowed in with a group of trappers for a long evening of primitive surgery and laughing gas reveries. The stories in this collection, along with King's brilliant title novella set in Maine after the 2000 election, carry the weight of real emotion and revelation and showcase the impressive versatility of a rising talent.
Synopsis
Imaginative, gripping stories and a funny, poignant novella set in Maine after the 2000 presidential election make up this exciting literary debut.
About the Author
Owen King grew up in Bangor, Maine. He is a graduate of Vassar College and holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and his stories have appeared in Book Magazine and the Bellingham Review. He has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and is a recipient of the John Gardner Award for Short Fiction. He currently resides in Brooklyn.