Games and Rituals

Description

The beloved author of Early Morning Riser brings us eleven glittering stories of love - friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts - in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime. The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny's characters range from mischievous to tender. In 'Bridesmaid, Revisited,' Marilee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid's dress to work. In 'Twist and Shout,' Ericka's elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In 'Turn Back, Turn Back,' a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor's deception. And in '561,' Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband's ex-wife move out of the family home. From one of our most celebrated writers, our bard of waking up in the wrong bed, wearing the wrong shoes, late for the wrong job, but loved by the right people, Katherine Heiny has delivered a work of glorious humour and immense kindness.

Katherine Heiny's fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Narrative,Glimmer Train, and many other places. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and children. This is her first book.

Praise for Early Morning Riser: 'Gorgeous. Very, very funny, but so tender, so beautiful. I loved all the characters, I cared deeply' Marian Keyes 'Glorious. ' Nina Stibbe 'Charming and tender' Pandora Sykes 'Wise, sad and barkingly funny. I didn't want it to end' Lissa Evans 'Katherine Heiny's books feel like spending time with a smart, funny and beloved friend' Lisa Jewell 'Warm, witty, touching - and frequently hilarious' David Nicholls 'Heaven. Everything I have ever craved in a novel' Daisy Buchannan 'Heiny has smart and serious things to say about care and responsibility, even as she keeps things bubbly with a steady stream of comedy provided by the novel's gossipy close-knit community' DAILY MAIL 'Early Morning Riser is tender, funny and affecting, a charming friend of a book to ease the Covid blues' THE BIG ISSUE 'It's a heart-warming tale of flawed, fragile, funny characters who battle unruly emotions and disappointments to seize the chance of happiness when it comes their way' DAILY EXPRESS