Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories
Just down the highway from Connecticut's Gold Coast is the state's rusty underbelly, the wretched, used-up sort of place where you might find Xhenet Aliu's Domesticated Wild Things: the reluctant mothers, delinquent dads, and not-quite-feral children, yet dreamers all. These are the children of immigrants who found boarded-up brass mills instead of the gilded streets of America; they're the teenaged girls raised in the fluorescent glow of Greek diners, the middle-aged men with pump trucks and teratomas. These are people who have fled, or who should have. And if they are indeed familiar, it is because Aliu writes what is real, whether we ourselves, her readers, have seen it up close or not. And her stories make sense in a way that matters.

A young mother buys into a real-estate investment seminar offered on an infomercial, only to be put back into her place by a bully in foreclosure. A closeted wrestler befriends a latchkey seven-year-old neighbor who harbors secrets of her own. A YMCA counselor tries to reclaim shoes stolen by a troubled young camper.

What they share is a biting humor, an eye for the absurd, and fumbling attempts at human connection, all rendered irresistible-and as moving as they are amusing-by a writer whose work is at once edgy and endearing and prize winning for reasons any reader can appreciate.

Xhenet Aliu's fiction has appeared in such journals as Glimmer Train, Hobart, and the Barcelona Review.
1115198837
Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories
Just down the highway from Connecticut's Gold Coast is the state's rusty underbelly, the wretched, used-up sort of place where you might find Xhenet Aliu's Domesticated Wild Things: the reluctant mothers, delinquent dads, and not-quite-feral children, yet dreamers all. These are the children of immigrants who found boarded-up brass mills instead of the gilded streets of America; they're the teenaged girls raised in the fluorescent glow of Greek diners, the middle-aged men with pump trucks and teratomas. These are people who have fled, or who should have. And if they are indeed familiar, it is because Aliu writes what is real, whether we ourselves, her readers, have seen it up close or not. And her stories make sense in a way that matters.

A young mother buys into a real-estate investment seminar offered on an infomercial, only to be put back into her place by a bully in foreclosure. A closeted wrestler befriends a latchkey seven-year-old neighbor who harbors secrets of her own. A YMCA counselor tries to reclaim shoes stolen by a troubled young camper.

What they share is a biting humor, an eye for the absurd, and fumbling attempts at human connection, all rendered irresistible-and as moving as they are amusing-by a writer whose work is at once edgy and endearing and prize winning for reasons any reader can appreciate.

Xhenet Aliu's fiction has appeared in such journals as Glimmer Train, Hobart, and the Barcelona Review.
18.95 In Stock
Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories

Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories

by Xhenet Aliu
Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories

Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories

by Xhenet Aliu

Paperback

$18.95 
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Overview

Just down the highway from Connecticut's Gold Coast is the state's rusty underbelly, the wretched, used-up sort of place where you might find Xhenet Aliu's Domesticated Wild Things: the reluctant mothers, delinquent dads, and not-quite-feral children, yet dreamers all. These are the children of immigrants who found boarded-up brass mills instead of the gilded streets of America; they're the teenaged girls raised in the fluorescent glow of Greek diners, the middle-aged men with pump trucks and teratomas. These are people who have fled, or who should have. And if they are indeed familiar, it is because Aliu writes what is real, whether we ourselves, her readers, have seen it up close or not. And her stories make sense in a way that matters.

A young mother buys into a real-estate investment seminar offered on an infomercial, only to be put back into her place by a bully in foreclosure. A closeted wrestler befriends a latchkey seven-year-old neighbor who harbors secrets of her own. A YMCA counselor tries to reclaim shoes stolen by a troubled young camper.

What they share is a biting humor, an eye for the absurd, and fumbling attempts at human connection, all rendered irresistible-and as moving as they are amusing-by a writer whose work is at once edgy and endearing and prize winning for reasons any reader can appreciate.

Xhenet Aliu's fiction has appeared in such journals as Glimmer Train, Hobart, and the Barcelona Review.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780803271838
Publisher: Nebraska Paperback
Publication date: 09/01/2013
Series: The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction
Pages: 156
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

About The Author

Xhenet Aliu’s fiction has appeared in such journals as Glimmer Train, Hobart, and the Barcelona Review.

Table of Contents



Acknowledgments
You Say Tomato
The Kill Jar
Ramon Beats the Crap Out of George, a Man Half His Size
Mandatory Evacuations
Flipping Property
Nadja Rides the Bear
Feather Ann
Two Assholes
Two-Step Snake
How to Play Shit
Domesticated Wild Things
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