American Innovations: Stories, Paperback

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A BRILLIANT NEW COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES FROM THE ``CONSPICUOUSLY TALENTED`` (TIME) RIVKA GALCHENWinner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award A New York Times Book Review Notable Book In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivka Galchen's American Innovations, a young woman's 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, reimagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevens's ``Anecdote of the Jar`` responds to John Keats's ``Ode on a Grecian Urn,`` Galchen's ``The Lost Order`` covertly recapitulates James Thurber's ``The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,`` while ``The Region of Unlikeness`` is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borges's ``The Aleph.`` The title story, ``American Innovations,`` revisits Nikolai Gogol's ``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.