num_pages: 294
description: A wild inventive ride of a short story collection from a distinctive new American storyteller. The stories in Thomas Pierces Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter a comedian a hot- air balloon pilot parents and children believers and nonbelievers the people in these stories are struggling to understand the absurdity and the magnitude of what it means to exist in a family to exist in the world. In Shirley Temple Three a mother must shoulder her sons burdena cloned and resurrected wooly mammoth who wreaks havoc on her house sanity and faith. In The Real Alan Gass a physicist in search of a mysterious particle called the daisy spends her days with her boyfriend Walker and her nights with the husband who only exists in the world of her dreams Alan Gass. Like the daisy particle itselfforever locked in a curious state of existence and nonexistence sliding back and forth between the twothe stories in Thomas Pierces Hall of Small Mammals are exquisite mysterious and inextricably connected. From this enchanting primordial soup Pierces voice emergesa distinct and charming testament of the New South melding contemporary concerns with their prehistoric roots to create a hilarious deeply moving symphony of stories.
language: English
title: Hall of Small Mammals: Stories
publisher: Riverhead Books