"Like John Cheever's enormous radio, Allison Amend's stories channel disturbing voices from that unknowable world that exists outside our doors. First collections are often like petit fours, precious and sweet. Amend has served up something much heartier, a plate-crowding smorgasbord."
-- Justin Tussing, author of The Best People in the World
THINGS THAT PASS FOR LOVE
by Allison Amend
(OV Books/Dzanc, 2008)
ABOUT THE BOOK:
An incisive, poignant, often hilarious look at contemporary relationships, Allison Amend's short story collection eschews the familiar dating scene in favor of portrayals of fractured families, urban schools, small towns, book clubs, cults, academia, golf culture, and--yes--sex in modern life. A teacher struggles to bond with jaded students as bodies drop from the sky; a man meets his illegitimate son for an awkward pumpkin picking excursion; a professor develops a sexual obsession with the student destined to surpass him; and a female cyberotica writer looks for conventionality in the form of a suitor who may be in love with her dog. Whether writing about a small town murder, homeschooling, experiments on lab mice, or the disintegration of a long marriage over the course of a game of golf, Amend's characters are more than whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny, they are chillingly real, memorable people looking for loveÑor what passes for it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Allison Amend was born in Chicago, Illinois on a day when the Cubs beat the Mets 2-0. She attended Stanford University and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa WritersÕ Workshop. While there, she learned never to live downwind from a pig farm and how to put English on a cue ball. Her work has received awards from and appeared in One Story, Black Warrior Review, StoryQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner, and Other Voices, among other publications. Allison lives in New York City. You can visit her Web site at www.allisonamend.com.
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