If a Stranger Approaches

by Laura Kasischke

Overview

In her first collection of short stories, Laura Kasischke exposes the dark heart of the domestic—it's wrapped in shabby silk, tucked away in a dresser drawer. If A Stranger Approaches You reminds us that intersection of the bizarre and the quotidian is always at play. Memorial statues and raggedy dolls seem to come to life, a man listens to the electric menace of suburban power lines while he struggles with his failed marriage, and the little boy and his dog knocking on the door might be Death in disguise. Surreal and darkly comic, these are stories that know the unexpected graces and random collisions that drive and haunt us. As one of her narrators remarks, "What a thing, this life."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936747498
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	03/05/2013
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Laura Kasischke is the author of seven collections of poetry and seven novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Pushcart Prize and the Juniper Poetry Prize. Her latest, Space in Chains, received the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan and teaches at the University of Michigan MFA program in Ann Arbor.

Table of Contents

If A Stranger Approaches You
Mona
Search Continues for Elderly Man
Melody
Three Tragedies
Memorial
Joyride
Ghost Anecdote
The Prisoners
I Hope This is Hell
Somebody's Mistress
You're Going to Die

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"In Kasischke's moody first collection of stories (after eight novels and eight poetry collections, including the NBCC Award-winning Space in Chains), characters are ill equipped to handle anger and fear, and they find their old refuges lacking.... The disruption of families and neighborhoods is a particular theme, with the real-life dangers of poverty and foreclosure intertwining with unreal details and true-crime plots.... Noxious, unforgettable narrative.... A slim but winning collection."
—Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

In Kasischke’s moody first collection of stories (after eight novels and eight poetry collections, including the NBCC Award–winning Space in Chains), characters are ill equipped to handle anger and fear, and they find their old refuges lacking. In “Mona,” a mother makes a disturbing discovery while snooping in her teenage daughter’s room, a parent-child conflict motif that repeats, in the long-suffering daughter of “You’re Going to Die” relishing the nasty new power she has over her ailing father, and, in “The Flowering Staff,” when a man meets his fiancée’s creepy family. Other standouts, “The Barge” and “I Hope This Is Hell,” combine flashbulb memories of childhood trauma with a pulsing emotional immediacy. In “Search Continues for Elderly Man,” an old man’s mind is overtaken with a mad swirl when a boy and his dog ask him to “come out and play,” but Kasischke brings reality crashing back with an on-the-nose move that kills the spell. The disruption of families and neighborhoods is a particular theme, with the real-life dangers of poverty and foreclosure intertwining with unreal details and true-crime plots. The noxious, unforgettable narrative that unfolds in “Somebody’s Mistress, Somebody’s Wife” combines all of these, as an ex-mistress committed to a quiet life watches her neighborhood’s troubles with horrified fascination. A slim but winning collection. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

“Highly acclaimed poet and novelist Kasischke’s first collection is a surreal, sometimes shocking, often humorous journey to the dark side of American domestic life…. This collection of intelligently crafted stories will satisfy Kasischke fans and short story lovers alike. Highly recommended.”
—Starred Review, Library Journal

"In Kasischke's moody first collection of stories (after eight novels and eight poetry collections, including the NBCC Award-winning Space in Chains), characters are ill equipped to handle anger and fear, and they find their old refuges lacking.... The disruption of families and neighborhoods is a particular theme, with the real-life dangers of poverty and foreclosure intertwining with unreal details and true-crime plots.... Noxious, unforgettable narrative.... A slim but winning collection."
—Publishers Weekly

"Laura Kasischke's first collection of stories, If a Stranger Approaches You, describes a world haunted, not by the undead, but by the phantoms of unemployment, increased airport security and missed credit card payments. The signature confluence between realism and the uncanny found in much of Kasischke's writing, both as poet and novelist, makes this book an important addition to her own body of work and to the contemporary literature of end times…. Not even the unspeakable escapes Kasischke's eye."
—NPR Books

"Throughout her alarming and gorgeous collection of 15 short stories, If a Stranger Approaches You, Kasischke artfully plays with the line that divides private fantasy from public acts."
—Boston Globe

"In Kasischke's book, unsettling encounters occur in both familiar places—airports, suburban neighborhoods—and in surreal locations. In "Our Father," children camouflage their father in gray rags on a gray couch in case "Officials" look for him during "the War." But what war? Where? The many successful stories.... are masterfully told... Though unsettling, this debut story collection makes gripping reading."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

From the Publisher

Highly acclaimed poet and novelist Kasischke's first collection is a surreal, sometimes shocking, and often humorous journey to the dark side of American domestic life. Kasischke (Space, in Chains) transports the reader to an alternate world where things are rarely what they seem, where violence and horror intermingle with beauty and absurdity, and the false idealism of human relationships is exposed. Her characters at first seem like no one we know, but we soon discover that they are we and we are they. In the timely title story, a woman confronts possible terrorism and (along with the reader) must answer the question, What would I do if this happened to me? These absorbing, disconcerting stories provide no easy answers and the author gives nothing away, often leaving readers to arrive at their own conclusions. VERDICT Written with her trademark lyrical prose and innovative use of narrative, this collection of intelligently crafted stories will satisfy Kasischke fans and short story lovers alike. Highly recommended.—Lisa Block, Atlanta

Library Journal