You Would Have Told Me Not To: Stories
Jul 2020 · Open Road Media
Ebook
304
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About this ebook
A “gripping, beautiful, emotionally raw” collection of stories about the things that go wrong between men and women from a PEN Award winner.
Arriving in the midst of the #MeToo era, these stories examine the fallout from failed relationships between men and women—partnerships that have crumbled under the weight of betrayal, misplaced hopes, illness, and particularly masculinity at its most toxic and misguided.
A man in his mid-thirties receives a call from a woman he barely knows, who informs him that a girl he bedded and dumped in high school has died of cancer. A man who had an affair and left the woman without any warning finds himself working on a demolition job with a younger man who might be their son. Yet another man, obese for years, is left by his wife, loses weight, and drunk with the power of finally being fit, tries to reconnect with his former spouse—to disastrous ends. And in the title story, a woman summoned to the bedside of her son, who has suffered a gunshot wound, must finally come to terms with the serial infidelities of her charming ex-husband.
These fictions ask very contemporary questions: How do ex-spouses learn to live again in proximity to one another? How do we make peace with our bodies and their own worst impulses? How do we learn to turn and face, head-on, the worst mistakes of our younger selves?
“One of our best American short story writers, on par with Tobias Wolff and Andre Dubus.” —Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will
“Engaging . . . rich prose and sharp dialogue.” —Publishers Weekly
“The stories in You Would Have Told Me Not To read like miniature thrillers . . . expertly suspenseful, emotionally powerful, and delightfully dark. The last one, in particular, punched me in the heart.” —Kristin Roupenian, author of You Know You Want This: “Cat Person" and Other Stories
Arriving in the midst of the #MeToo era, these stories examine the fallout from failed relationships between men and women—partnerships that have crumbled under the weight of betrayal, misplaced hopes, illness, and particularly masculinity at its most toxic and misguided.
A man in his mid-thirties receives a call from a woman he barely knows, who informs him that a girl he bedded and dumped in high school has died of cancer. A man who had an affair and left the woman without any warning finds himself working on a demolition job with a younger man who might be their son. Yet another man, obese for years, is left by his wife, loses weight, and drunk with the power of finally being fit, tries to reconnect with his former spouse—to disastrous ends. And in the title story, a woman summoned to the bedside of her son, who has suffered a gunshot wound, must finally come to terms with the serial infidelities of her charming ex-husband.
These fictions ask very contemporary questions: How do ex-spouses learn to live again in proximity to one another? How do we make peace with our bodies and their own worst impulses? How do we learn to turn and face, head-on, the worst mistakes of our younger selves?
“One of our best American short story writers, on par with Tobias Wolff and Andre Dubus.” —Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will
“Engaging . . . rich prose and sharp dialogue.” —Publishers Weekly
“The stories in You Would Have Told Me Not To read like miniature thrillers . . . expertly suspenseful, emotionally powerful, and delightfully dark. The last one, in particular, punched me in the heart.” —Kristin Roupenian, author of You Know You Want This: “Cat Person" and Other Stories
About the author
Christopher Coake is the author of the novel You Came Back (2012) and the story collection We’re in Trouble (2005), which won the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for a first work of fiction. His new collection, You Would Have Told Me Not To (2020), is published by Delphinium. In 2007, Coake was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. His short fiction has been anthologized in collections such as Best American Mystery Stories 2004; The Best American Noir of the Century; and Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories; and has been published in numerous literary journals. A native of Indiana, Coake received his MFA in fiction from Ohio State University. He is an associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he directs the MFA program in creative writing, and lives in Reno with his wife, Stephanie Lauer, and their two dogs.
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