Description
“Seven Stories About Tammy by Elizabeth McCracken, paints a portrait of a complicated family with the concision of a short story and the depth of a novel, and makes it look easy.”—Celeste Ng
Morris Harkin brings his new girlfriend Tammy to meet his family. She is not at all who they expected. But who, really, is Tammy? Across seven vignettes, in Elizabeth McCracken’s witty and tender fashion, we see Tammy through the eyes of the Harkin family throughout the years, and a picture of an insecure and unhappy family emerges.
The first in a new short stories series from Biblioasis.
Praise for Seven Stories About Tammy
“One of the best things I have ever read in my life. It made me cackle out loud and filled me with joy . . . Elizabeth McCracken is one of our greatest writers.”
—Ann Patchett
“Seven Stories About Tammy by Elizabeth McCracken, paints a portrait of a complicated family with the concision of a short story and the depth of a novel, and makes it look easy.”
—Celeste Ng
Praise for Elizabeth McCracken
“There’s a wickedness to McCracken’s technique, the way she lures us in with her witty voice and oddball characters but then kicks the wind out of us. She never misses the infamous 7-10 split, managing to hit Annie Proulx and Anne Tyler with the same ball.”
—Ron Charles, Washington Post
“McCracken . . . proves her mastery of short fiction with these 12 tightly structured, searingly realistic stories . . . Enduring love—along with the urge to resist it—is this volume’s common theme, whether in relationships between parents and children, lovers, ex-lovers, friends, and even in-laws . . . An astonishingly powerful collection worth multiple readings.”
—Kirkus Reviews(starred review)
“The master stylist and author of Bowlaway rolls another strike with this magnificent array of idiosyncratic love stories.”
—Oprah Daily
“McCracken, herself, is a hard-working performer, an acrobat who dazzles with her verbal flexibility and lands the end of each tightly composed story with incredible skill—and feeling. Her inimitable images heighten the delight . . . McCracken’s writing is never dull . . . [a] fantastic collection.”
—NPR
“Elizabeth McCracken’s impressive third story collection evoke moving depictions of marriage and parenthood, and love, betrayal, and loneliness . . . A steady stream of exquisite writing.”
—Boston Globe
“This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders: expatriates and repatriates, Vikings, travelling ventriloquists . . . Whether it’s over the course of a honeymoon in Amsterdam or a day at a Texas water park, McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters’ lives.”
—New Yorker
“McCracken opens up worlds in a mere sentence, and every page is illuminated with nuanced observations of human behavior.”
—Booklist
