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"Brisk, ironic ... scalpel-sharp.... A funny, cohesive, and moving collection of stories." --The New York Times Book Review

In these tales of loss and pleasure, lovers and family, a woman learns to conduct an affair, a child of divorce dances with her mother, and a woman with a terminal illness contemplates her exit. Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

"A wry, crackly voice. . . . Fine, funny, and very moving pictures of contemporary life [from] a writer of enormous talent."
—The New York Times

"Brisk, ironic . . . scalpel-sharp. . . . A funny, cohesive, and moving collection of stories." —The New York Times Book Review

"Astonishing. . . . Moore is so good at trapping each moment in perfect, precise detail, so masterful at cynicism and wryness that her moments of poignancy and sweetness catch us completely off guard." —San Francisco Chronicle

“Sharp, flicking, on-target . . . the work of a sorcerer’s apprentice. Moore casts a cruel, mischievous spell.” —Vanity Fair

“Trenchant, funny tales. . . . Moore is much more than another chronicler of the chronically out-of-sync relations between American men and women. She writes with urgency and pace.” —People

LORRIE MOORE, after many years as a professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is now Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Moore has received honors for her work, among them the Irish Times International Prize for Literature and a Lannan Foundation fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. Her novel A Gate at the Stairs was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the PEN/Faulkner Award.