Hardly children
Subtitle: stories
By: Laura Adamczyk
Edition: First edition.
Series: FSG originals; FSG originals
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
ISBN-13: 9780374167899
Subjects: Desire; Interpersonal communication; Compulsive behavior; Impulse; American Short stories; Interpersonal relations; Fiction
Work titles: Short stories
Description: An eerie debut collection featuring missing parents, unrequited love, and other uncomfortable moments. A man hangs from the ceiling of an art gallery. A woman spells out messages to her sister using her own hair. Children deemed "bad" are stolen from their homes. In Hardly Children, Laura Adamczyk's rich and eccentric debut collection, familiar worlds--bars, hotel rooms, cities that could very well be our own--hum with uncanny dread. The characters in Hardly Children are keyed up, on the verge, full of desire. They're lost, they're in love with someone they shouldn't be, they're denying uncomfortable truths using sex or humor. They are children waking up to the threats of adulthood, and adults living with childlike abandon. With command, caution, and subtle terror, Adamczyk shapes a world where death and the possibility of loss always emerge. Yet the shape of this loss is never fully revealed. Instead, it looms in the periphery of these stories, like an uncomfortable scene viewed out of the corner of one's eye.
Table of contents: title: WANTED --; title: Girls --; title: Too much a child --; title: Gun control --; title: Wine is mostly water --; title: Danny girl --; title: Intermission --; title: Here comes your man --; title: Give and go --; title: Needless to say --; title: The summer father --; title: Black box --; title: Acknowledgments.