Entire Predicament

In this refreshing, funny, and startling collection of stories, Lucy Corin veers far from the path of staid contemporary fiction. She masterfully weaves traditional and experimental topics and techniques, creating a fictional world where people behave normally in the most extreme situations, and in bizarrely with almost no provocation at all. But thanks to her vivid, sharp prose and insightful first-person voices, even the oddest behavior is utterly believable. Unpredictable and playful, these stories transcend their apocalyptic feel to offer a vision that is clear, humane, and completely engaging. The Entire Predicament secures Corin’s reputation as an original, stylistically courageous voice in contemporary avant-garde fiction.

"These short stories are as smart as pinpricks, magic tricks. They go off like a string of firecrackers." Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners

"Sometimes quirkily funny, sometimes shading into menace or serious derangement, The Entire Predicament zigzags its way over the walls we tend to build between the serious, the absurd, the humorous, the off-kilter, and the mad. This is an uncanny book." Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain

"Lucy Corin's Swiftian satires are brilliant — stunningly so — and entirely original." Rikki Ducornet, author of The Word "Desire"

"These stories are sharp, subtle, and surprising, rendering the truth of experience beautifully into fiction." Lynn Freed, author of Reading, Writing and Leaving Home

"Lucy Corin's The Entire Predicament is a book of eyes and I's. Behold, wherever Corin's eye falls on this occluded world of ours, it is transformed in a twinkling — the scales come unhinged and we can't fail to see to see." Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and The Blue Guide to Indiana

"Pure sleight of hand. How is it done? Come closer, I'll tell you. She closes her eyes and watches the movies playing 24-7 inside the lids." -Susan Reynolds, LA Times "The Entire Predicament is fiercely strange and written with keen control. You don't read these stories: you undergo them. They are an event that is lived, not an object that is scanned. Language here is a tangible sensation; Corin's words have weight, temperature, odor, texture, bite. Vision and noise invade you. You become anxious. Then you may find yourself pinching your nose, squeezing your eyes, so as not to let this world escape your body." -Micaela Morrissette, Rain Taxi "If prudence allowed, I would populate this review with nothing but passages from Lucy Corin's mesmerizing collection of stories, The Entire Predicament. My notes are filled with sentences and paragraphs that beg to be shared..." -Chas Bowie, The Portland Mercury "Corin is brave and crafty enough to make us enjoy being spectators in the disintegration of their worldviews." - Ashleigh Lambert, InDigest magazine "These stories take about ten seconds each to get their hooks in you for life. Do those hooks hurt? Of course they do, in all the funnest ways." - Roy Kesey, E!Online Books You Must Read: Picks for 2007 "Corin's prose is playful but sharp; she invites readers to get comfortable, then yanks the rug up from under us....Collectively, these narrators' musings on the meaning of life and day-to-day existence drive us into our own messy thoughts, our own secret ways of coping. They make a connection with us, as the best characters and stories should." -Anne Stameshkin, EnfuseMagazine.com "These short stories are as smart as pinpricks, magic tricks. They go off like a string of firecrackers." -Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners "Lucy Corin is a fearless writer." -Pam Houston, author of Sight Hound "Lucy Corin's Swiftian satires are brilliant-stunningly so-and entirely original." -Rikki Ducornet, author of The Word "Desire" "These stories are sharp, subtle, and surprising, rendering the truth of experience beautifully into fiction." -Lynn Freed, author of Reading, Writingand Leaving Home "Lucy Corin's The Entire Predicament is a book of eyes and I's. Behold, wherever Corin's eye falls on this occluded world of ours, it is transformed in a twinkling-the scales come unhinged and we can't fail to see to see." -Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and The Blue Guide to Indiana "Sometimes quirkily funny, sometimes shading into menace or serious derangement, The Entire Predicament zigzags its way over the walls we tend to build between the serious, the absurd, the humorous, the off-kilter, and the mad. This is an uncanny book." -Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain

Lucy Corin's daring debut story collection interweaves the traditional and the experimental, leading the reader through a world where characters behave normally in the most extreme situations and bizarrely with almost no provocation at all. Corin is an original, stylistically courageous emerging voice in contemporary avant-garde fiction.

Lucy Corin's daring debut story collection leads the reader through a world where characters behave normally in the most extreme situations and bizarrely with almost no provocation at all. Unpredictable and playful, Corin brilliantly dissects time, people, places, and things, truly rendering how it feels to be human.

Corin is an assistant professor in the English Department at James Madison University.