National Network for Equitable Library Service

A New York Times Notable Book: Darkly comic fables of modern life from a "major discovery" whose "writing gets in your bloodstream like a fever" (The Washington Post Book World). A housewife with a ravenous lust for the adolescent boy who mows her lawn swallows him whole. A woman nonchalantly hacks off her leg at a posh private club. A father babyproofs his house so thoroughly he never sees his wife and child. And a businessman passing through an airport risks it all to save a giant lobster from death. In these "brisk, funny, stylish, original" stories, the award-winning author of Carnivore Diet merges the mundane with the unimaginable, and peels back the squeaky-clean facade of suburbia to expose the strangeness underneath (Elle). Combining biting wit, wild imagination, and "unsettling, hallucinatory" prose, Julia Slavin masterfully satirizes the world of upscale families and young professionals as they confront their greatest fantasies and most grotesque fears in unexpected, and often hilarious, ways (The New York Times Book Review).