Making Nice: A Novel in Stories
Meet Alby, the heartbroken antihero at the center of Matt Sumell’s ferocious, funny, and wrenching debut Making Nice.

Fueled by heartache, fury, and the occasional pain pill from his mother’s leftover stash, Alby is flailing wildly as he tries (and mostly fails) to cope with his mother’s death. From his hometown on the Great South Bay to a sailboat in a Los Angeles marina, he stalks the perimeters of calamity: he punches his sister; gets drunk; picks fights; and spews insults at children, slow drivers, old ladies, and every single surviving member of his family. But it’s in the rare moments of connection—training an abandoned bird up for combat, commiserating with a toddler in a breakfast joint, spoon-feeding his grandmother gelatinized milk—that Alby begins to see a way to survive his pain.

With unforgettable style and force and an “ingenuous humanity that makes every page feel new” (The Guardian), Matt Sumell’s blistering debut blurs the line between fighting for and fighting with the only family you’ve got.

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Making Nice: A Novel in Stories
Meet Alby, the heartbroken antihero at the center of Matt Sumell’s ferocious, funny, and wrenching debut Making Nice.

Fueled by heartache, fury, and the occasional pain pill from his mother’s leftover stash, Alby is flailing wildly as he tries (and mostly fails) to cope with his mother’s death. From his hometown on the Great South Bay to a sailboat in a Los Angeles marina, he stalks the perimeters of calamity: he punches his sister; gets drunk; picks fights; and spews insults at children, slow drivers, old ladies, and every single surviving member of his family. But it’s in the rare moments of connection—training an abandoned bird up for combat, commiserating with a toddler in a breakfast joint, spoon-feeding his grandmother gelatinized milk—that Alby begins to see a way to survive his pain.

With unforgettable style and force and an “ingenuous humanity that makes every page feel new” (The Guardian), Matt Sumell’s blistering debut blurs the line between fighting for and fighting with the only family you’ve got.

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Making Nice: A Novel in Stories

Making Nice: A Novel in Stories

by Matt Sumell
Making Nice: A Novel in Stories

Making Nice: A Novel in Stories

by Matt Sumell

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Meet Alby, the heartbroken antihero at the center of Matt Sumell’s ferocious, funny, and wrenching debut Making Nice.

Fueled by heartache, fury, and the occasional pain pill from his mother’s leftover stash, Alby is flailing wildly as he tries (and mostly fails) to cope with his mother’s death. From his hometown on the Great South Bay to a sailboat in a Los Angeles marina, he stalks the perimeters of calamity: he punches his sister; gets drunk; picks fights; and spews insults at children, slow drivers, old ladies, and every single surviving member of his family. But it’s in the rare moments of connection—training an abandoned bird up for combat, commiserating with a toddler in a breakfast joint, spoon-feeding his grandmother gelatinized milk—that Alby begins to see a way to survive his pain.

With unforgettable style and force and an “ingenuous humanity that makes every page feel new” (The Guardian), Matt Sumell’s blistering debut blurs the line between fighting for and fighting with the only family you’ve got.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250081582
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 02/09/2016
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Matt Sumell is a graduate of UC Irvine’s MFA program, and his fiction has since appeared in Esquire, the Paris Review, Electric Literature, One Story, Noon, and elsewhere. He is the author of the short story collection Making Nice. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Table of Contents

Punching Jackie 1

Little Things 13

If P, Then Q 21

Rape in the Animal Kingdom 23

Everything Is a Big Deal 41

Eat the Milk 54

The Block, Twice 65

American Ninja 2 75

Making Nice 81

Super Markets 85

Their Appointed Rounds 95

Rest Stop 102

Testy 112

Toast 126

All Lateral 138

I'm Your Man 164

Inheritance 172

The Cold Way Home 175

OK 183

Bugs 217

Acknowledgments 221

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