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Riverhead
January 2013
On Sale: January 10, 2013
304 pages
ISBN: 1594486042
EAN: 9781594486043
Kindle: B008U45TY0
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction Family Life
In the tradition of George Saunders and Aimee Bender, an exuberantly imagined debut that chronicles an ordinary world marked by unusual phenomena.
The eighteen stories of Manuel Gonzalesβs exhilarating first book render the fantastic commonplace and the ordinary extraordinary, in prose that thrums with energy and shimmers with beauty. In βThe Artistβs Voiceβ we meet one of the worldβs foremost composers, a man who speaks through his ears. A hijacked plane circles a city for twenty years in βPilot, Copilot, Writer.β Sound can kill in βThe Sounds of Early Morning.β And, in the title story, a man is at war with the wife he accidentally shrank. For these characters, the phenomenal isnβt necessarily specialβbut itβs often dangerous.
In slightly fantastical settings, Gonzales illustrates very real guilt over small and large marital missteps, the intense desire for the reinvention of self, and the powerful urges we feel to defend and provide for the people we love. With wit and insight, these stories subvert our expectations and challenge us to look at our surroundings with fresh eyes. Brilliantly conceived, strikingly original, and told with the narrative instinct of a born storyteller, The Miniature Wife is an unforgettable debut.
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