num_pages: 289
description: Here is a new collection of short stories from the writer Rick Moody has called the best prose stylist in America.Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of Bloomington reads Now that I have been here for a little while I can say with confidence that I have never been here before. Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flauberts correspondence; or they may be inspired by the authors own dreams or the dreams of friends.What does not vary throughout Cant and Wont Lydia Daviss fifth collection of stories is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian revealing the mysterious the foreign the alienating and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.
language: English
title: Can't and Won't
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux