Description
"These stunning stories, steeped in black humor, startle and dismay. They are about the cost and joys of caretaking, the unexpected encounters that confine and define us. Odd fellows and peculiar young women appear in abundance in these pages, as do obsessions and fantasies. We see relationships with partners, parents, family, coming of age, characters with no clear road ahead. Who is the baby? What is the box? How do we break away from what confines us? The book is strategically divided into two sections. The first section contains stories about giving away babies, abortion, and ambivalent maternity. The story, "Baby in a Box" begins in a diner with an old woman telling her waitress about how she once left a newborn on the church steps. "Marjorie Lemke" (The New Yorker) follows a motel housekeeper who makes a radical proposal to a guest she's having an affair with. In "Shavasana," a mother of two teenagers fakes pregnancy in order to attend prenatal yoga classes-but can't sustain the performance. The "baby" becomes an ailing porcupine in another story, tended to by a man with secrets. "Authority" (The Harvard Review) looks at a lovesick immigration lawyer who winds up involved with a government agent. "Superstition" (The New Yorker) takes on a teenager's atheism and grief. The second half attends to the new gifts and connections that arise out of loss. In "All You Have To Do" (The New Yorker) a boy wins a lifetime supply of aluminum foil and encounters a salesman who opens up his life. In "Abject Naturalism" (The New Yorker; Best American Stories 2025) a mother's world is disrupted and recharged after a neighborhood man gives her daughter a telescope. The two women in "Fox in the Lounge" find a surprising new bond at a nostalgic bar. The cocky male narrator of "The Modern Era" (Playboy) looks back on Trumpism and the woman who saved him from its reach. The last story is a celebration of parenthood- a playful take on blended families and modern love"-- Provided by publisher.
