A Place in the World
Stories
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2025 Drue Heinz Literature Prize
Stories of Ordinary People Experiencing Extraordinary Circumstances
The eleven stories in A Place in the World are character-driven portrayals of various lives transformed by random events or twists of fate. A young woman living on the coast of Maine confronts her painful past when her little brother comes to visit after being released from rehab, a hopeless gay hustler, in for the long con, instead finds himself falling in love while vacationing in Denmark, a failed New York City actor afraid of commitment goes on a comic rant and embraces an epiphany while cat-sitting for a friend. In separate, first-person narratives, a struggling husband and wife take turns describing the impact of a scandalous crisis in their marriage, and a settled suburban dad arrives at a beach house for the weekend, only to realize he robbed one of the other houseguests thirty-four years earlier. In this poignant, engaging collection, Gaythwaite offers compassion and surprising optimism while celebrating astonishing resilience in the face of life’s persistent challenges.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gaythwaite (Underburn) delves into the secret lives of his seemingly ordinary protagonists in this contemplative collection of 11 stories. The title entry follows a gay former hustler who fondly remembers a man he fell in love with, but betrayed and exploited. The narrator of "If Only You Knew" grapples with his similarities to his father, who abandoned the family when the narrator was a boy. In "Off the Grid," Katie's husband proudly returns to their suburban home after a fistfight, resurfacing her memories of her violent ex-boyfriend and his untimely death. Gaythwaite can be prone to repetition—"The Lost Object Exercise" also features a gay man whose hustling past has caught up with him, while the protagonist of "The Simple Part" recalls the sudden death of a former lover and withholds these thoughts from his current boyfriend. Still, these stories get a great deal of mileage from what goes unsaid, sidestepping melodrama and leaving the reader to consider the impact of the characters' tumultuous pasts on their current lives. There's much to admire in this well-crafted collection.
