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THINGS THAT PASS FOR LOVE - Allison Amend
An incisive, poignant, often hilarious look at contemporary
relationships, Allison Amend's much-anticipated Things That Pass
for Love eschews the familiar dating scene in favor of portrayals
of fractured families, urban schools, small towns, book clubs,
cults, academia, golf culture, and—yes—sex in modern
life. A teacher struggles to bond with jaded students as bodies
drop from the sky; a man meets his illegitimate son for an awkward
pumpkin picking excursion; a professor develops a sexual obsession
with the student destined to surpass him; and a female cyberotica
writer looks for conventionality in the form of a suitor who
may be in love with her dog. Whether writing about a small town
murder, homeschooling, experiments on lab mice, or the disintegration
of a long marriage over the course of a game of golf, Amend's
characters are more than whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny,
they are chillingly real, memorable people looking for love—or
what passes for it.
“Nobody writes like Allison Amend—partly because
Allison Amend doesn’t write like she’s only one person.
The stories in this fearlessly funny, insanely intelligent, delicately
wrought collection are so varied, so accomplished, you will think
you are reading an anthology of many masters’ works.”
—Thisbe Nissen, author of The Good
People of New York and Osprey Island
“Like John Cheever’s enormous radio, Allison Amend’s
stories channel disturbing voices from that unknowable world
that exists outside our doors. First collections are often like
petit fours, precious and sweet. Amend has served up something
much heartier, a plate-crowding smorgasbord.”
—Justin Tussing, author of The Best
People in the World
“For those of us who love and worry for the short form,
Allison Amend’s startling and fresh new voice is a Godsend.”
—Helen Schulman, author of P.S. and
The Revisionist
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Allison Amend was born in Chicago, Illinois
on a day when the Cubs beat the Mets 2-0. She attended Stanford University
and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While
there, she learned never to live downwind from a pig farm and how to put
English on a cue ball. Her work has received awards from and appeared in
One Story, Black Warrior Review, StoryQuarterly, Bellevue
Literary Review, the Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner, and Other
Voices, among other publications.
Allison lives in New York City. Visit her on the web at www.allisonamend.com |
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