Synopses & Reviews
Adept and assured, David Means's stories are as perceptive as they are provocative, skillfully and startlingly sounding the depths of human emotion.
In Assorted Fire Events we find a major talent honing his skills, a gambler willing to push the limits while, at the same time, taking great care in playing his cards.
A married man carries on an affair with a neighbor, and suddenly his mind whisks him back to his brother's drowning. A recently widowed mother must decide what to do with a video of her honeymoon love-making.
A distraught businessman goes to the railroad tracks to find some sort of comfort and perhaps peace of mind, but finds the exact opposite in a group of young, miscreant men. Sneaking into a wedding reception, a homeless man forever changes the lives of all present. Suburban sprawl leads to disastrous consequences in the Pushcart Prize-winning What They Did.
In prose that radiates in every direction, Assorted Fire Events exposes the human condition and explores the fragility of those things that we most cherish, establishing David Means as a tremendous new presence in contemporary American literature.
Synopsis
A new collection of short stories by the 1999 Pushcart Prize winner introduces readers to a colorful cast of characters as they struggle with personal epiphanies and moments of fate. Reader's Guide available. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.
Synopsis
In his award-winning second collection, David Means explores the fragility of those things that we cherish most. His incomparable, distinct voice—often wildly humorous, always engaging—has led the New York Times to call Means "one of our most talented younger writers."
Synopsis
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About the Author
David Means is the author of A Quick Kiss of Redemption and The Secret Goldfish. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Short Stories. He lives in Nyack, New York, and teaches at Vassar College.