Damn Love
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Set in San Francisco and North Carolina, the linked stories in Damn Love introduce us to a group of characters struggling with love in all its complicated forms, including a young doctor who treats heroin addicts, a newly married gay man who tries to reconcile with his mother after years of estrangement, a trio of physicists caught in a surprising love triangle, and a soldier who takes secrets with her to the Iraqi desert. Together, these stories report from the fault lines of American life, uncertain territory where identity, risk, and desire comingle, and where resilience is found in even the most flawed efforts to connect.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set primarily in San Francisco and North Carolina, the nine linked narratives of Beach-Ferrara's modest debut collection explore the highs and lows of modern love, showing a wide swath of characters gay, straight, married, divorced, sober, smashed sliding in and out of each other's lives. While these connections can be tenuous, made through shared locations, like San Francisco's W Hotel, rather than personal relationships, they allow characters' histories to be unveiled over multiple stories. Alex, a young doctor featured in the leadoff, "Stayin' Alive," cameos in nearly all of the tales, and it is in these brief appearances that she is most believable. Likewise, Weasel, a junkie and former boxer first seen as Alex's patient in "Stayin' Alive," flexes his muscles in "Hit Me," one of the volume's strongest efforts, where he falls for the social worker handling his case, Ruthie, while trying to straighten out his life. Throughout, Beach-Ferrara concentrates on creating rich character backstories. While the collection can be uneven, with stories like "Custody Bus" lingering too long on the past and lacking momentum, "Monkey," with its aging, retired protagonist mourning his dead lover and fumbling his way through courtship, delivers emotional resonance in a frank look at the fragility of normalcy.
