National Network for Equitable Library Service

In this dazzling collection of stories, characters confront the painful absurdities and everyday horrors that come with being a woman. A writer discovers that her ex-boyfriend has published a novel about their breakup. An immunocompromised woman falls in love. A Reddit post about a man's habit of grabbing his girlfriend's breasts prompts a dark confession. A teenager contends with an unsettling shift at home after her beautiful mother has a disfiguring accident. A child-free woman goes on a date with a man who tests her boundaries. A college student vows to end things with her aspiring geneticist boyfriend, who wishes she had blue eyes. And when a woman unexpectedly begins to lose her hair, she embarks on an increasingly nightmarish search for answers. The characters in Death by a Thousand Cuts seek connection while facing longing, fear, rage, and the impossible expectations placed on women. With bracing honesty and a skewering wit, these stories boldly wrestle with themes of illness, pain, desire, bodily autonomy, and their inescapable impacts on a woman's relationships with others and with herself.