Named one of AmazonтАЩs Best Short Story Collections of 2014
One of Atlanta Journal ConstitutionтАЩs 9 Best Books of 2014
Best Short Story Collection of the Year, Tweed's Magazine
Winner of GLCA New Writers Award for Fiction
2014 LA Times Book Prize Finalist
Winner of the Florida Book Awards Silver Medal for Fiction
Nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction
тАЬA debut collection of unsparing yet warmly empathetic storiesтАжakin to both Anton Chekhov and Raymond Carver in humane spirit and technical masteryтАЭ (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
The Heaven of Animals, award-winning young writer David James PoissantтАЩs stunning debut, has been one of the most-praised story collections of the year. Named one of AmazonтАЩs Best Short Story Collections of 2014, compared to the work of Richard Ford and Amy Hemple in the Los Angeles Review of Books, to Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, and George Saunders in the New York Post, and the subject of a full-page rave by Clyde Edgerton in Garden & Gun, this тАЬcollection of vicious and heartbreaking vignettesтАЭ (The Orlando Sentinel) is a must-read for any fiction lover.
In each of the stories in this remarkable debut, Poissant explores the tenuous bonds of familyтАФfathers and sons, husbands and wivesтАФas they are tested by the sometimes brutal power of love. His strikingly true-to-life characters have reached a precipice, chased there by troubles of their own making. Standing at the brink, each must make a choice: Leap, or look away? Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Martin writes that Poissant forces us тАЬto face the people we are when weтАЩre alone in the dark.тАЭ
From two friends racing to save the life an alligator in тАЬLizard ManтАЭ to a girl helping her boyfriend face his greatest fears in тАЬThe End of Aaron,тАЭ from a man who stalks death on an Atlanta street corner to a brotherтАЩs surprise at the surreal, improbable beauty of a late night encounter with a wolf, Poissant creates worlds that shine with honesty and dark complexity, but also with a profound compassion. These are stories hell-bent on hope.
Fresh, smart, lively, and wickedly funny, The Heaven of Animals is startlingly original and compulsively readable. As bestselling author Kevin Wilson puts it, тАЬPoissant is a writer who knows us with such clarity that we wonder how he found his way so easily into our hearts and souls.тАЭ