O, The Oprah Magazine's 20 Best Titles of the Year
Time Magazine's 100 Books to Read in 2020
Financial Times' Best Books of 2020
Esquire's Best Books of 2020
**New York Times Editors' Choice
**
Lit Hub's Best Books of 2020
Bustle's Best Short Story Collections of 2020
Electric Literature's Favorite Short Story Collections of 2020
Library Journal's Best Short Stories of 2020
"Superb. . . . Krauss's depictions of the nuances of sex and love,
intimacy and dependence, call to mind the work of Natalia Ginzburg in
their psychological profundity, their intellectual rigor. . . . Krauss's
stories capture characters at moments in their lives when they're hungry
for experience and open to possibilities, and that openness extends to
the stories themselves: narratives too urgent and alive for neat
plotlines, simplistic resolutions or easy answers." --Molly Antopol,
New York Times Book Review
"From a contemporary master, an astounding collection of ten
globetrotting stories, each one a powerful dissection of the thorny
connections between men and women. . . . Each story is masterfully
crafted and deeply contemplative, barreling toward a shimmering,
inevitable conclusion, proving once again that Krauss is one of our most
formidable talents in fiction." --Esquire
In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges
fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and
what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed
from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and
moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to
Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man
feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers,
and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.
The way these stories mirror one other and resonate is beautiful, with a
balance so finely tuned that the book almost feels like a novel. Echoes
ring through stages of life: aging parents and new-born babies; young
women's coming of age and the newfound, somewhat bewildering sexual
power that accompanies it; generational gaps and unexpected deliveries
of strange new leases on life; mystery and wonder at a life lived or a
future waiting to unfold. To Be a Man illuminates with a fierce,
unwavering light the forces driving human existence: sex, power,
violence, passion, self-discovery, growing older. Profound, poignant,
and brilliant, Krauss's stories are at once startling and deeply moving,
but always revealing of all-too-human weakness and strength.
