Fly Already
Stories
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From a "genius" (New York Times) storyteller: a new, subversive, hilarious, heart-breaking collection.
"There is sweetheartedness and wisdom and eloquence and transcendence in his stories because these virtues exist in abundance in Etgar himself... I am very happy that Etgar and his work are in the world, making things better." --George Saunders
There's no one like Etgar Keret. His stories take place at the crossroads of the fantastical, searing, and hilarious. His characters grapple with parenthood and family, war and games, marijuana and cake, memory and love. These stories never go to the expected place, but always surprise, entertain, and move...
In "Arctic Lizard," a young boy narrates a post-apocalyptic version of the world where a youth army wages an unending war, rewarded by collecting prizes. A father tries to shield his son from the inevitable in "Fly Already." In "One Gram Short," a guy just wants to get a joint to impress a girl and ends up down a rabbit hole of chaos and heartache. And in the masterpiece "Pineapple Crush," two unlikely people connect through an evening smoke down by the beach, only to have one of them imagine a much deeper relationship.
The thread that weaves these pieces together is our inability to communicate, to see so little of the world around us and to understand each other even less. Yet somehow, in these pages, through Etgar's deep love for humanity and our hapless existence, a bright light shines through and our universal connection to each other sparks alive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Keret (The Seven Good Years) balances gravitas and drollery in this collection of 23 pieces. Stories often begin with declarative sentences "I celebrate the kid's birthday the day after." that presume an intimacy with the reader and immediately engage. Many are very short; "Evolution of a Breakup," "At Night," "The Next-to-Last Time I Was Shot Out of a Cannon," each capture a moment of emotional complexity. Longer stories start with that same directness and add complications. "Tabula Rasa" begins with the explanation of a frightening recurrent dream rooted in academia and ends with echoes of the Holocaust. In "Crumb Cake," Mom is grumbling because her 50-year-old son is unsatisfied with the birthday cake she has made him. As a lunch celebration plays out, deeper fissures in their relationship are revealed. The longest story, "Pineapple Crush," begins with "the first hit of the day" and follows the tumultuous life of a functioning drug addict who has a job working with an after-school program. Peppered throughout the book is an email thread about terrorism, Nazism, and UFOs; it's the most unconventional story of all, bringing home the idea that the personal is political. The endlessly inventive Keret finds the truth underlying even the simplest human interactions.
