I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories - Paperback

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I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories
  • I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories - Paperback

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories - Paperback

by Laura Van Den Berg
$17.00
$17.00

Book Overview

ONE OF TIME'S 10 BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2020. Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, the New York Public Library, Library Journal, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Tor.com

"As enchanting as fairy tales, as mysterious as dreams, these exquisitely composed fictions are as urgent and original as any being written today." --Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction

An urgent and unsettling collection of women on the verge from Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg's first story collection since her prizewinning book The Isle of Youth, draws readers into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and the mind. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Berg's trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Iceland, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the fears we reveal to no one but ourselves.

In "Lizards," a man mutes his wife's anxieties by giving her a LaCroix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and destructive consequences, while in "Karolina," a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother.

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears presents a collection of women on the verge, trying to grasp what's left of life: grieving, divorced, and hyperaware, searching, vulnerable, and unhinged, they exist in a world that deviates from our own only when you look too closely. With remarkable control and transcendent talent, van den Berg dissolves, in the words of the narrator of "Slumberland," "that border between magic and annihilation," and further establishes herself as a defining fiction writer of our time.
ISBN9781250798664
Author Laura Van Den Berg
PublisherPicador USA
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedJuly 2021
LanguageENG- English
Pages224
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Fiction Literary Psychological Short Stories

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More by Laura Van Den Berg

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories - Paperback

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories - Paperback

By Laura Van Den Berg

About Laura Van Den Berg

Laura van den Berg is the author of three story collections, including I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, which was named one the ten best fiction books of 2020 by Time, and the novels Find Me and The Third Hotel, which was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and she is a two-time finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Born and raised in Florida, she splits her time between the Boston area and Central Florida.

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