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People Like You (Paperback)
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Staff Reviews
Aptly titled, People Like You, the debut story collection from Portland writer Margaret Malone, captures the desires, frustrations, and absurdities of modern life. Set in the Western states, these closely observed tales are told through the eyes of women, but are equally concerned with the men who share their lives. A newly engaged high school graduate takes a road trip to Reno with her fiance and his chain-smoking mom. A secretary follows her boss into the woods on a literal (and hilarious) wild goose chase. And a married couple, recurrent in three of these pieces, struggles with conceiving a child. Malone's stories burn with unfulfilled yearning and spark with the frayed connections between her exquisitely rendered characters. These are people you feel that you know. People who are so like all of us. People like you.
— MichaelDescription
Finalist, PEN/Hemingway Award
In this marvelously funny, unsettling, subtle, and moving collection of stories, the characters exist in the thick of everyday experience absent of epiphanies. The people are caught off-guard or cast adrift by personal impulses even while wide awake to their own imperfections. Each voice will win readers over completely and break hearts with each confused and conflicted decision that is made. Every story is beautifully controlled and provocatively alive to its own truth.
About the Author
Margaret Malone is the cohost of SHARE, an artist and literary gathering, and a Dangerous Writers alumna. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Coal City Review, The Missouri Review, Propeller Quarterly, and Swink Magazine. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Praise For…
"A powerful debut by a writer of immense talent . . . stories that shimmer and burn with beauty and sorrow, generosity and wit . . . I love this book beyond measure.” —Cheryl Strayed, author, Wild
"Margaret Malone's stories are fearless and true. People Like You is a sharp debut that leaves the reader eager with want for all the books that follow the sharp debut." —Kyle Minor, author, Praying Drunk
“A stunning debut . . . People Like You is full of people like us with all of our sorrows, fears, our wit and damage, and this debut collection deserves many, many readers and high praise!” —Lisa Glatt, author, A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That
“A stunning debut . . . People Like You is full of people like us with all of our sorrows, fears, our wit and damage, and this debut collection deserves many, many readers and high praise!” —Lisa Glatt, author, A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That
“There are moments in Margaret Malone’s collection People Like You when it’s hard to breathe . . . whether it’s a dying mother at a slot machine, a drinking pregnant mother stalking sex offenders, or a husband who’s having his prostate checked—every story is flawlessly told . . . Malone is a name that will soon be up there with the best and the brightest.” —Tom Spanbauer, author, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon
"Margaret Malone’s masterfully constructed stories simmer with a dry, dark humor that reveals the truth of the human soul. People Like You makes good on the promise of its title, with characters who are fully formed heads and hearts and bodies struggling with loneliness, love (or lack thereof), and who—and how—to be in the modern world." —Liz Prato, author, Baby’s On Fire
"People Like You is wonderful on how much we need each other and let each other down, and how despite that and against all odds we grow into loving one another." —Jim Shepard, author, Like You’d Understand, Anyway
"People Like You will blow your mind, steal your heart, and leave your DNA rearranged . . . The biggest mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of storytelling I’ve seen in years.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author, The Small Backs of Children