In the title story of this debut collection, neighborhood boys crouch in a backyard toolshed, and conspire to prove that their piano teachers are witches. In "Cannibal Kings," a young man accompanies a troubled boy on a tour of prep schools through the Pacific Northwest. And in "Come Live with Me and Be My Love," a middle-aged gentleman looks back at his mannered early life, married to a vivacious woman but silently yearning for his best friend.

With a classic storyteller's gift for nuance and understanding, and a poet's grace for language, Andrew Sean Greer makes a remarkable debut with How It Was for Me.

"Wry and rueful.... Quirky and languorous, [Greer's] style beautifully captures his characters' wistful self-consciousness.... His stories are humane and hopeful in ways that are too rare." John Perry, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"[An] impressive debut...There are very few flubbed lines in Greer's stark, delicate opererttas, which are as clever as they are gravely real." Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times

"Impressive...Greer's descriptive talents are immense.... While these stories are thick with melancholy, their frankness is refreshing." The New York Times Book Review

"Crystal-like clarity...outstanding...nuanced language...Greer is a writer worth watching." Martin Wilson, Austin Chronicle

"Refreshing and provocative...Greer's stories are self-contained and well crafted.... Subtle and poetic." Chris Berdik, The Boston Book Review

With a classic storyteller's gift for nuance and understanding, and a poet's grace for language, Andrew Sean Greer makes a remarkable debut with How It Was for Me. Focusing on the lives of eleven people - those who have discovered and been uncovered by the truths of life, those who have sacrificed, those who have fallen - Greer fashions a unified, stunning portrait of America, one with the ultimate force and candor of testimonial.

Andrew Sean Greer was born in 1970 in Washington, DC, the son of two scientists. He studied writing with Robert Coover and Edmund White at Brown University, where he was the Commencement Speaker at his own graduation in 1992. After years in New York working as a chauffeur, theater tech, television extra and unsuccesful writer, he moved to Missoula, MT, where he received his MFA from the University of Montana. He then moved to Seattle, and two years later to San Francisco. He began to publish in magazines such as Esquire, The Paris Review and Story before releasing a collection of his stories, How It Was for Me. His first novel, The Path of Minor Planets, was published to much acclaim in October of 2001, and his second book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, came out in February 2004 with FSG. Upon publication, John Updike compared his work to Proust and Nabokov in The New Yorker; in the Netherlands, reviewers have mentioned Kafka and Gogol; a dozen other translations are forthcoming. He lives in San Francisco. His identical twin brother, Michael Greer, is also a writer.