num_pages: 175
description: In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivkas Galchens American Innovations a young womans furniture walks out on her. In another the narrator feels compelled to promise to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated pains and loves of a family.The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories re-imagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevenss Anecdote of the Jar responds to John Keatss Ode on a Grecian Urn Galchens The Lost Order covertly recapitulates James Thurbers The Secret Life of Walter Mitty while The Region of Unlikeness is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borgess The Aleph. The title story American Innovations revisits Nikolai Gogols The Nose.By turns realistic fantastical witty and lyrical these marvelously uneasy stories are deeply emotional and written in exuberant pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel Galchen is a writer like none other today.
language: English
title: American Innovations
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux