I'd Really Prefer Not to Be Here with You, and Other Stories

by Julianna Baggott

Overview

Bestselling author Julianna Baggott delivers her mind-bending debut short-story collection, featuring an array of genres populated by deeply human characters, and with film rights to the stories already having been sold to Netflix, Paramount, Amblin, Lionsgate, and others!

In the title story, set five minutes in the future where you not only have a credit score but also a dating score, a woman who’s been banished from all dating apps attends a weekly help group with others who have been “banned for life,” and finds herself falling in love. In “Backwards,” a twist on Benjamin Button, a woman reconnects with her estranged father as he de-ages ten years each day they spend together. In “Welcome to Oxhead,” all the parents in a gated community “shut off” when the power goes out. In “Portals,” a small town deals with hope and loss when dozens of portals suddenly open. In “How They Got In,” a grieving family starts to see a murdered girl in all of their old home videos.

This fantastical collection from a unique voice contains a myriad of stories of the weird and wonderful. Julianna Baggott is a talented and clever guide, and I’d Really Prefer Not to Be Here with You will take the reader on a journey unlike anything they’ve experienced.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798212206471
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	03/28/2023
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Julianna Baggott is a poet and the author of several novels for adult readers, including Girl Talk, The Madam, and The Miss America Family, as well as Which Brings Me to You, cowritten with Steve Almond. As the pseudonymous N. E. Bode, she has written The Slippery Map, The Anybodies, The Nobodies, and The Somebodies. She lives with her family in Tallahassee, Florida.

Editorial Reviews

01/09/2023

Baggott (Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders) delivers a moving fantastical collection. In “Nest,” a teenager is overcome with guilt over her mother’s suicide and haunted by her mother’s ghost, who has a bird’s nest for a jaw. In “The Knock-Offs,” people obsessed with celebrities create children using stolen DNA from their favorite stars. Baggott structures the story as a series of letters to the actor Bradley Cooper, in which the narrator, Cooper’s biological daughter, begs Cooper to help her mother avoid prison time for stealing his DNA. “The Gaslighter’s Lament” features AI robots designed to gaslight people at the behest of customers. Things go sideways after one of the robots turns the tables on its client. In “Inkmorphia,” a woman’s memorial tattoo to her brother won’t stop changing its shape and placement, driving her to look deeper into the cause of his death and her repressed memories of the event. The title story features a woman who falls in love in a support group for people who have been banned from dating apps after their “dating credit” score was “dinged” by exes. Though the narrators’ voices tend to bleed together, Baggott does a commendable job of exploring their grief and loneliness through the stories’ strange phenomena. This is stacked with feats of imagination. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

This book is a treasure chest filled with wild and wondrous tales. A gorgeous and brilliant collection!”

author of Children of the New World Alexander Weinstein

Reading this story collection is like stepping in front of a fun house mirror. At first, you see yourself, your world, and the characters as ordinary. But with one side step, your body slowly distorts into something unexpected, wicked, even silly. But vibrating underneath, somehow, Julianna Baggott’s words ground us with the familiar truths that allow us to see the ordinary as something truly extraordinary.”

actress and producer Jessica Biel

Casually fantastical, beautifully surreal, and packing an unexpected emotional punch, the stories in I’d Really Prefer Not to Be Here with You are clever and subversive and proof that, in the right hands, big ideas can come in small, perfect packages.”

New York Times bestselling author of This Is Where Jonathan Tropper

Julianna Baggott has written a timely and compelling collection of short stories covering a variety of speculative fiction themes, many of which are reminiscent of episodes of the dystopian science-fiction show "Black Mirror." A bevy of talented narrators deliver the stories, which have intriguing themes, such as a romantic credit score that renders some individuals banned from dating apps, a gaslighting AI that is paired with certain individuals to increase their dependency, virtual-reality gaming therapy, the process of hacking bodies, and a daughter witnessing the reversal of her father's aging process at the end of life. The laudable narrators, with their varied performances, keep the listener engrossed in highly original and thought-provoking stories. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2024 - AudioFile