Tell Me: 30 Stories

“Robison has a poet's eye for the unconscious surrealism of commercial America.” —The New York Times Book Review

Tell Me reflects the early brilliance as well as the fulfilled promise of Mary Robison's literary career. In these stories—most of which appeared in The New Yorker throughout the eighties—we enter her sly world of plotters, absconders, ponderers, and pontificators.

Robison's characters have chips on their shoulders; they talk back to us in language that is edgy and nervy; they say...