No Guarantees

"Each piece is an aria – from the terrifying "Fable" to the maid in "The Golden Robe," from the storyteller in "Red Horse Running Through Water" to the exuberant, operatic Rose in "A Love Story in One Act." ... "Olé Henry!" has to be the most inspired love song to Henry James around!" —Rita Dove The narrator in one of these stories recalls his father's advice about fishing: "Fishing is sometimes you catch, sometimes you don't. No guarantees. Just surprises." Surprises are just what's in store for readers of Melissa Malouf's daring collection. Instead of a familiar unity of place or voice or theme, No Guarantees offers a lyrical collage of styles, tones, and characters. You'll find realism and fantasy, parody and pure dialogue, mystery and music—all on behalf of the dramatic evocation of different lives and different desires, different means of self-expression. "Each voice in this beguiling collection of stories is so different and personal that one could imagine them as written by many authors, until one feels the same mastery in all of them, the same trenchant and tender observation of the human condition of quiet, desperate, loving people. A real find!" —Ariel Dorfman "In any voice or style, her work amuses, mystifies, holds the reader's attention." —Library Journal.