Two Nurses, Smoking
Stories
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
A new collection of stories by David Means, a visionary "master of the form" (The Observer).
Two nurses meet in the hospital parking lot to share a cigarette. They flirt and imagine a future together. They tell stories of patients lost and patients saved, of the darkest corners of human suffering and the luminous moments that break through, even here, in the shadow of death.
In David Means’s virtuosic new collection, time unfolds in unexpected ways: a single, quiet moment swells with the echoes of a widower’s complicated marriage; a dachshund, given a new name and a new life by a new owner, catches the scent of the troubled man who previously abandoned her; young lovers become old; estranged couples return to their vows; and those who have died live on in perpetuity in the memories of those whom they touched. The stories in this collection—which have won the O. Henry Prize and the Pushcart Prize, and have been featured in The Best American Short Stories—confirm the promise of a writer who “believes in the power of stories to rescue and redeem people” (Max Liu, Financial Times).
A revelatory meditation on trauma and catharsis, isolation and communion, Two Nurses, Smoking reflects the dislocations and anguish of our age, as well as the humanity and humor that buoy us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Means (Instructions for a Funeral) explores the parameters of existence in his dazzling latest. In the title story, two nurses trade war stories over break—one's about a doomed junkie dubbed Kidney Boy, another about a serial killer fellow nurse—and discover their capacity for love in each other. "Lightning Speaks!" is a hodgepodge of chatter centering on a teenage runaway adrift in the 1960s counterculture movement, while "The Red Dot" recalls the testament of a divorced man who regards the strange apparition of his water-averse ex-wife emerging from a river as a portent. "Stopping Distance" unspools from a bereavement support group, and "Vows" follows the second life of a marriage following a betrayal. In "Clementine, Carmelita, Dog," a canine describes her memories and experiences while passing from one owner to another. The lovely closer, "The Depletion Prompts," takes the form of a series of recursive writing prompts, an eminently teachable Barthian meditation that spells out Means's interest in "the failure of language to reclaim pain," as described in a prompt to write about the "strange dynamic between the past and the present." Readers will revel in this robust collection.
