Eleven "impeccably crafted, painfully hilarious" tales of innocence
lost and families in search of connection from the New York
Times-bestselling author (San Francisco Chronicle).
A reluctant trophy wife on her Italian honeymoon; a young woman in love
with her sister's dead boyfriend; a lonely puppeteer flirting with the
hostess of a children's party; a teenage girl traveling to Paris with
her father and, unexpectedly, his young girlfriend. Francine Prose's
characters inhabit a world of rich emotion and startling clarity,
searching for connection in a world full of surprise and humor; they
travel, love, break up, and start again. Even their animal companions--a
gecko rescued from a wild party, a dog who bites a bride, a hamster who
dies unexpectedly and sends a family on a journey to give it a proper
funeral--shine with the emotional complexity and sly satire that make
Prose's work such a joy to experience.
In this collection, the New York Times-bestselling author and National
Book Award finalist demonstrates the craft, humor, and piercing human
insight that make her, in the words of Gary Shteyngart "one of a handful
of truly indispensable American writers."