Love is Strange: Stories of Postmodern Romance

These diverse and original and sometimes thoroughly outrageous talents present love stories that range from the tender to the abrasive, the sunny to the darkly sexual, the poignant to the savagely ironic. Love is Strange proves that an era of safe sex can still produce dangerous and exhilarating art about the universal experience of romance.

What is this thing called love? And where has it gone in contemporary fiction? Do “serious” young writers still attempt love stories? If they do, are the tales they tell drenched in cynicism or tenderness? Is modern love about intimacy, or desire, or obsession, or simple hard-edged attitude? Or all of the above? Love is Strange answers these questions by collecting work from sixteen writers who prowl the edges of human experience and literary form to evoke the landscape of American love from deepest downtown New York and decadent California to politically correct campuses and surreal suburbia.