Certain American States

Description

Certain states are hard to shake, or so Catherine Lacey's characters find in these twelve tales of love, loss and longing. A grieving wife gives away the shirts her husband has left behind. A flirtatious widow takes a honeymooning couple to see her husband's grave. A businessman working for a shadowy organization known as 'The Company', checks-in to a room in a strange and remarkable hotel.

Catherine Lacey is the author of The Answers and Nobody Is Ever Missing. She has won a Whiting Award, was a finalist for the NYPL's Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. Her books have been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch & German. She was born in Mississippi and is based in Chicago. Certain American States is her first story collection.

With a spare but poetically concentrated style, Catherine Lacey vividly captures the addled, bombed-out, wryly fuzzy perspectives of her lost and drifting characters. These are stories of mystery and brooding, wintry beauty -- Colin Barrett, author of * Young Skins * Lacey is playful and smart, one of a generation of American women who seem entirely unafraid -- 'Best Summer Books' selected by Anne Enright * Guardian * Profoundly playful and piercingly good... The prose is full of mathematical pleasures. You don't have to read them, but you really should -- Anne Enright * Guardian * Exquisite... Completely beautiful -- Eithne Farry * Daily Mail * Spectacular... Very funny, very bleak... Darkly affecting -- Michael LaPointe * TLS * Often very funny... Certain American States has a sureness of touch and the unmistakable stamp of knowing exactly what it's doing -- Selected by Sam Leith as a book of the year * Spectator *