Emergency Stories
Emergency Stories by Kathleen Alcott, published by W. W. Norton in 2023, is a collection of short stories that delves into the complexities of American life. This edition, comprising 188 pages, presents a range of narratives that explore themes of addiction, love, misogyny, and sexual power through the lens of women’s experiences. The stories feature diverse settings, from European cities to California towns, and tackle the emotional and psychological challenges faced by the characters.
Readers will encounter a variety of situations, including a professor’s unsettling discovery in a museum, a young professional grappling with paranoia, and a woman navigating trust in a new city amid revelations of her partner’s past. Alcott’s writing captures the nuanced struggles of her characters as they confront the hidden dangers of class ascension and seek to reconcile their pasts with their aspirations for a better future. This collection offers a thought-provoking examination of the unfreedoms that accompany personal and societal transitions.
Official synopsis Publisher
A professor finds a photograph of her deceased mother in a compromising position on the wall of a museum. A twenty-something’s lucrative remote work sparks paranoia and bigotry. A transplant to a new city must make a choice about who she trusts when her partner reveals a violent history. The summer after her divorce from an older man, an exiled painter’s former friends grapple with rumors that she attempted to pass as a teenager.
In this long-awaited debut collection, Kathleen Alcott turns her skills as a stylist on the unfreedoms of American life–as well as the guilt that stalks those who survive them. Emergency roams from European cities to scorched California towns, drug-smeared motel rooms to polished dinner parties, taking taut, surprising portraits of addiction, love, misogyny, and sexual power. Confronting the hidden perils of class ascension, the women in these stories try to pay down the psychic debts of their old lives as they search for a new happiness they can afford.
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