WINNER OF THE PUSHCART PRIZE
"This collection is her best ever." AMY TAN
Wife with Knife is a collection of quick and quirky short stories,
that are an utter delight and winner of the Leapfrog Global Fiction
Prize 2020
"Molly Giles' stories have always been among my favorites since I first
read her work thirty-seven years ago. This collection is her best ever.
What an irreverent, original voice! I found myself gasping in shock and
laughter, feeling at the end of each tale that I had garnered strange
wisdom on the human heart and its unerring sense for finding
trouble."--Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club
The speakers in Molly Giles's Wife With Knife offer their truths with
surprising starkness: "[T]he actual heart looks more like a tongue
than a valentine" states the grief-flayed aunt of "Agate Beach," while
the careless driver of "Accident" thinks "If I rear-ended anyone in
California, I might be sued or shot but I would not be prayed upon."
Many of the stories are not traditional narratives but glimpses of the
trouble or healing that lies ahead: teens refusing to heed traffic,
lovers staring down death and betrayal and closure. Like a street
magician's trick, Wife With Knife holds out each everyday tragedy or
quiet triumph only to replace it seamlessly with another.
