Author:Margaret Atwood
Discover this sharp, funny short story collection from the bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments
A man finds himself surrounded by women who are becoming paler, more silent and literally smaller; a woman's intimate life is strangely dominated by the fear of nuclear warfare; a melancholy teenage love is swept away by a hurricane, while a tired, middle-aged affection is rekindled by the spectacle of rare Jamaican birds...
In these exceptional short stories, by turns funny and searingly honest, Margaret Atwood captures brilliantly the complex forces that govern our relationships, and the powerful emotions that guide them.
‘An acute and poetic observer of the eternal, universal, rum relationships between men and women’ The Times
An acute and poetic observer of the eternal, universal, rum relationships between men and women
—— The TimesIf anyone has better insight into women and their central problem - men - than Margaret Atwood, and can voice them with as much wit, impact and grace, then they haven't started writing yet
—— Daily MailSophisticated, reticent, ornate, stark, supple, stiff, savage or forgiving...they are stories from the prime of life
—— Times Literary SupplementAn outstanding correspondent on the war between the sexes writes as wittily as ever on the hopes and shortcomings of women who bake for poets, sleep with their accountants, attribute their preference for awful men to fearlessness, and don't know how much they scare their own mothers
—— ObserverDitlevsen's wonderful and devastatingly bleak short stories simmer with melancholy and despair ... Her prose is clear and spare, pared back to the essential task of describing the struggle for an unwon freedom from domestic despair and unsatisfactory marriages
—— Daily MailThe depths of desire and despair are Ditlevsen's subjects and illuminating them is her talent
Ditlevsen's writing is crystal clear and vividly, painfully raw
—— The Paris ReviewA terrifying talent
—— The New York TimesHer writing is incredible, so focused and clear. Not a word that doesn't need to be there
—— Tracey ThornIn the genre of feminine madness, these stories are to be worshipped. They are fearless, hysterical, violent yet full of grace. Each sentence escalates toward devastating, poetic insight about our bodies, about cultural demands both treasured and feared, and about what makes being alive a terror and a joy.
—— VENITA BLACKBURN, author of How to Wrestle a GirlChang returns with a dazzling collection of stories within stories that draw on old myths to embody the heartache and memories of Asian American women. Chang's bold conceits and potent imagery evoke a raw, visceral power that captures feelings of deep longing and puts them into words. This stellar collection will leave readers hungry for more.
—— Publishers Weekly (starred review)This book traces a line from old worlds to new worlds by means of the bloody umbilical cords that stretch between them. . . . These stories unthread the tangled relationships between mothers and daughter, aunts and cousins, siblings and lovers . . . a lingering sense that language, as well as life, is infinitely adaptable, no matter the ground on which it is given to grow. Lurid, funny, strange, and deftly sorrowing-an important new voice.
—— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Dazzling . . . This stellar collection will leave readers hungry for more.
—— Publishers Weekly (starred review)[K-Ming Chang] rewrites the world as a place of radical transformation.
—— New York Times Book Review[Her] ability, to take a common, decidedly earthbound, experience and transform it through her lens into a fantastical, otherworldly encounter shines. . . . Chang's writing reflects her gift as a lifelong listener of oral storytelling . . . and her ability to synthesize new ideas with her own spin on language.
—— San Francisco ChronicleChang has a special talent for forging history into myth and myth into present-day fiction. . . . Gods of Want is in some ways a fantasy of queer freedom. Its main characters, all Taiwanese or Chinese by birth or descent, are allowed to be who they are, to love and make love to whomever they choose.
—— Los Angeles Times[K-Ming Chang] is back with her signature precise and enthralling prose in this short-story collection.
—— ShondalandK-Ming Chang's inspired mix of magic and realism returns in full fabulist force. . . . The stories are eclectic . . . and united by Chang's fascination with the queer and quotidian in her characters' worlds. . . . Piercing.
—— EsquireHer new short-story collection Gods of Want both widens and calcifies the expansiveness of her range. . . . Chang is singular amongst us all. . . . New work from Chang is a cause for celebration-a holiday in its own right-and it's also a reminder of the infinite possibilities on the page. . . . Nothing short of marvelous.
—— Bryan Washington , Electric Literature