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AMERICAN INNOVATIONS: STORIES
By: Rivka Galchen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
May 2014
On Sale: May 6, 2014
192 pages
ISBN: 0374280479
EAN: 9780374280475
Kindle: B00GET18D4
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction
A brilliant new collection of short stories from โthe conspicuously talentedโ (Time) Rivka Galchen
In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivkaโs Galchenโs American Innovations, a young womanโs furniture walks out on her. In another, the narrator feels compelled to promise to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated pains and loves of a family.
The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, reimagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevensโs โAnecdote of the Jarโ responds to John Keatsโs โOde on a Grecian Urn,โ Galchenโs โThe Lost Orderโ covertly recapitulates James Thurberโs โThe Secret Life of Walter Mitty,โ while โThe Region of Unlikenessโ is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borgesโs โThe Aleph.โ The title story, โAmerican Innovations,โ revisits Nikolai Gogolโs โThe Nose.โ
By turns realistic, fantastical, witty, and lyrical, these marvelously uneasy stories are deeply emotional and written in exuberant, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer like none other today.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - May 13, 2014
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