About the Book
At the age of 25, Marian Thurm began publishing short stories in The New Yorker, and her work has been compared to the short fiction of Lorrie Moore, Ann Beattie, and Amy Bloom. Known for her uncanny sense of the absurd along with her deep empathy for her characters, Thurm’s acclaimed work has been chosen for The Best American Short Stories and numerous other anthologies. This volume, selected from her four short story collections—with stories written over a span of 42 years—displays Thurm’s remarkable craft, never failing to reveal both her emotional acuity and her pitch-dark humor.
Praise for Pleasure Palace
“[An] unsparing, ironic sensibility and killer eye for detail…Though her view of things is almost unremittingly dark, Thurm is always ready with a wisecrack to take the edge off.
―Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Marian Thurm
Marian Thurm writes with an authority that is always impressive…and that compels our innocent belief. Her stories are acoustically perfect…She writes so brilliantly of the battle of the sexes.
―New York Times Book Review
An exceptional collection of stories…vivid and startling…She embraces the ironies and absurdities of the ordinary world and transforms them into a series of small epiphanies.
―Newsday
Eloquent…What distinguishes these stories… is Ms. Thurm’s ability to extrapolate whole lives from a few lines of dialogue, a handful of carefully selected observations…And we come to see her characters in the round, like beautifully shaped sculptures, rather than as simple portraits in a frame.
―The New York Times
Exquisitely crafted stories…about the way we live now.
―New York Magazine
What is wonderful…are Thurm’s cold, clear eye and her perfect ear for the way people talk…As an observer and reporter, she is wickedly accurate, generously tolerant and wryly amused.
―The Washington Post Book World
Wry, elegant stories… chronicling the frustrations and heartbreaks of contemporary domestic relationships with a brilliantly light touch. Thurm hits the funny/sad spot every time, whether the subject is bereavement, divorce, betrayal, or some other form of abandonment.
―Kirkus (starred review)
With its concise and insightful prose and pitch-perfect dialogue, this is a collection to savor.
―Booklist (starred review)
…Love and loss form myriad combinations in these quirky, funny, ironic, and heartbreaking tales.
―Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Marian Thurm is the author of seven other novels and five short story collections, including Today Is Not Your Day, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her novel The Clairvoyant was a New York Times Notable Book. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Michigan Quarterly Review, Narrative Magazine, The Southampton Review, and many other magazines, and have been included in The Best American Short Stories, and numerous other anthologies. Her books have been translated into Japanese, Swedish, Dutch, German, and Italian. She has taught creative writing at Yale University and Barnard College, in the MFA programs at Columbia University and Brooklyn College, at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence, and at the Yale Writers’ Workshop.