This Is Not a Love Song
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
A debut collection of moving and darkly witty stories from an "admirably fearless" (New York Times Book Review) writer whom critics have compared to Michael Chabon, E.L. Doctorow, and Dennis Lehane
A Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" Selection
When marriages, friendships, and families come undone, to what lengths do we go to keep it all together? That question lies at the heart of Brendan Mathews's buoyant and unforgettable debut story collection. A young mother watches as her desperate husband, convinced a hidden poison lurks inside their walls, tears their home apart. Two journalists bruised by romance and revolution, one a survivor of the Bosnian war, trade tales of lost lovers. A father and his sons haggle over the family business during a high-stakes round of golf. And a lovesick circus clown tries to explain the accidents that bound him to a trapeze artist and a witless lion tamer.
If Mathews's novel The World of Tomorrow was an "outsized" entertainment, a "big, expressive debut" (Wall Street Journal), then This Is Not a Love Song, two stories from which have been included in The Best American Short Stories, is glorious proof that he excels equally as a miniaturist. From rock-star flameouts to church burnings to ordinary people trying not to fall out of love, these stories are packed with vivid detail, emotional precision, and deft, redemptive humor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Variety, both in style and subject matter, is a hallmark of Mathews's quirky collection of 10 morally complex short stories. The author of The World of Tomorrow delves into the mind of an emotionally traumatized Bosnian journalist, incongruously going on an apple picking expedition in suburban Chicago, in "Heroes of the Revolution." He channels a disturbed clown in the chillingly antic "My Last Attempt to Explain to You What Happened with the Lion Tamer." And in the haunting "Look at Everything," he jumps into the consciousness of a depressed manager of an art house cinema in Chapel Hill who takes a photography class at a local community college and accidentally discovers the joys of arson. The ambitious title story imagines a photographer reconstructing her life with her primary subject, a female rock star, using a scrambled set of photos as touchstones, while "Henry and His Brother" darts precipitously between the thoughts of two uncomfortably intertwined siblings. The tormented, misguided protagonists raise common human miseries to a higher power and unconsciously reveal the seedy motivations behind their actions. This is an eclectic, accomplished collection.)
