Things That Pass for Love
Allison Amend
Release Date: September 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0976717744
Price: $16.95
eBook Price: $7.99
DESCRIPTION
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.
ADVANCE PRAISE
“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
REVIEWS
“The strangeness of the stories in Things That Pass For Love give them a particular kind of universality; we believe in these characters and situations even as we’re made a little uncomfortable at how easily we recognize them.” —Chicago Tribune
“The terrible impact of bodies falling from the sky, the shrill thwack of a golf ball hit out-of-bounds, the elusively tender caress upon a faithful dog's head. Such tactile, sensory imagery infuses Amend's lustrous collection of short fiction that celebrates the forlorn and isolated, the disgruntled and misunderstood, the least guarded and most apprehensive among us. With sly humor and subtle insight, Amend traces the uncertain trajectory of love from devotion to deception, blossom to breakup, through relationships both casual and deep. An inner-city schoolteacher tries desperately to break down the barriers between insensitivity and empathy in ‘Dominion over Every Erring Thing,’ while a writer of cybererotica is surprised by a callous lack of loyalty in ‘The People You Know Best.’ In a world where husbands begrudgingly support wives and sisters inexplicably betray brothers, where lovers appear and disappear at whim, Amend's dialogue is crisp and pure, her observations nuanced and keen, her understanding of the human condition buoyant and clear.” —Booklist
“Things That Pass for Love reads the way it should. A writer’s first collection of short stories should invariably, and perhaps I should take more caution before saying this, bite off more than it can chew. Risks need to be taken, legs need to be stretched, joints need to be popped, and other clichéd contortions need to take place or else you can kiss your self-respect goodbye.” —TheLitLife.com