Tabloid Dreams: Stories

· Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
3.0
1 review
Ebook
208
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

There are a dozen ways the American Dream can go awry in this “unrepeatable . . . tour de force” of short fiction from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author (The Washington Post Book World).
 
“[With] touches of Italo Calvino, Roald Dahl, and Gabriel García Márquez” the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award–winning author dazzles with his mastery of the short story and his ability to find humor and humanity in the extremes of the American way (San Francisco Chronicle).
 
Using tabloid headlines for inspiration—among them, “Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis,” “Woman Struck by Car Turns into Nymphomaniac,” and “Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed”—Butler moves from the fantastic to the realistic, and from the lurid to the transcendent, as he explores exile, loss, aspiration, and the search for self. Along the way, we meet a wife who uses her glass eye to spy on her cheating husband; a widow who sets herself on fire after losing a baking competition; a nine-year-old hit man; a woman who dates an extraterrestrial she met at Walmart; and a furtive and mournful JFK who survived the assassination.
 
“Butler peels back the sleazy veneer of the sensational to expose characters who long for love and the healing comfort of human compassion” —USA Today
 
“Read all about it: if you’re frustrated by the way nothing much seems to happen in modern short fiction, you’ll find Tabloid Dreams a whole different story.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“These stories are masterpieces.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel
 
Tabloid Dreams is full-blown American magical realism.” —Boston Review

Ratings and reviews

3.0
1 review

About the author

Robert Olen Butler is the author of ten novels and two collections of stories. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and a National Magazine Award in 2001 (both for fiction), he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and an NEA grant, as well as the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.