Synopses & Reviews
These flash fiction stories from one of todays emerging literary stars grasp to determine whether life can "come with fewer qualifications and be less equivocal,” a world where friendships are negotiated, love is one-sided, imagined, absent, or discovered, and where going crazy is more subtle than you'd think."
Review
"This collection of quick fiction is like a playlist of enthralling songs with every one a smash hit. The works share their authors gifts for distilled melodies and methods of great persuasion, for elegance of line, for the poignant or expectant detail, for a recognition of the sweet or funny or sexy or sad facets of lives unfolding. Here are blueberry scones, tattoos that say Nothing,” the scent of morning toast and the derived identities that might attend a bridesmaid, a stricken daughter, lovers as hunter or prey. But the stories do more. The young women narrators who talk us through these living moments seem often to be courting or rejecting mates, but they are driven by deeper, more mysterious impulses, for meanings and answers to our deepest questions."
James Robison, author of The Illustrator
"I cant explain the alchemy at work in a Lauren Becker story. Is it her voice, so real and immediate, so smooth in its resident sentences? Or is it something elsewhat happens beneath the accessible surface: how we might come to see were not reading; were being read? Ive got no answers. But Im ready to tell you this: no one at work in American fiction is doing what Becker does."
Scott Garson, author of Is That You, John Wayne?
"I've been reading Lauren Becker's stories for years and couldn't be happier to have them all collected in one place. Her stories inspire me to write, which is the highest compliment I can give to any writer."
Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California
An arresting, instantly recognizable voice. In compressed and furious prose, and with a flasher's urgent vulnerability, Lauren Becker scratches the surface of yearning until it bleeds into stories.”
Carolyn Cooke, author of Amor and Psycho
"I dig bellying up to one of Beckers stories. She knows how to mix that perfect cocktailequal parts pathos and elegant insight, with just a splash of humor. Fans of Amy Hempel will drink these stories down and immediately order another!"
Joshua Mohr, author of Fight Song
Synopsis
Flash-Fictions examining urges for connection where friendships are negotiated and love is one-sided, imagined, absent, discovered, or spirals into madness.
About the Author
Lauren Becker lives in Austin, Texas. She has worked as an attorney, a health care policy analyst and advocate, a freelance writer, and a disability specialist. Her fiction has appeared at
Tin House online,
Hobart, the
Los Angeles Review,
Pedestal Magazine,
Wigleaf, [PANK], and
NANO Fiction. Her non-fiction has been featured on
The Rumpus and
The Nervous Breakdown. She is editor of the online literary journal,
Corium Magazine.