Everybody Needs Something - by Melanie Pappadis Faranello (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Melanie Faranello's debut collection, Everybody Needs Something, delves into the interior lives of characters longing for connection, revealing the deep human desire to reach one another. A poignant exploration of the complexities of love, loss, and what is often left unsaid, the stories center on the space between us--couples, families, aging parents, children, and evolving selves that are shaped over time.

A newly widowed construction worker travels to a debris-filled healing pool to ease his grief; a retired couple relocates across the globe hoping to escape their troubles only to discover a new problematic infestation; a father places an ad inviting strangers to his first solo Thanksgiving dinner; a couple on the brink endures a wildlife lecture at the elementary school between hospital visiting hours for their daughter; a young divorcee has an unexpected encounter with her long-dead father during a Latin Ballroom dance class.

Quietly powerful and carefully observed, these fourteen stories resonate with emotional landscapes and hidden heartbreaks as characters meet their breaking points before somehow finding the courage to keep going.

Review Quotes

Faranello's prose is direct and lyrical, marked by a careful attention to detail that makes her characters' inner lives feel lived-in rather than explained. What stands out is her ability to show how time changes people through small shifts in perception and memory, and not through dramatic, grandiose events. The result is a collection that asks readers to recognize the weight of what goes unspoken, and how compassion can be revealed in ordinary moments.--Mark Massaro "The Masters Review"

Faranello's beautiful, big-hearted debut collection, Everybody Needs Something, may be driven by loss and longing, by families--spouses, children, parents--fractured by grief, but it's 'those little truths' they arrive at time and again with almost incidental grace that suffuse these searching stories with lasting wisdom and generosity. With quiet, unassuming mastery, Faranello renders her characters with such penetrative tenderness that their universal wish--for connection--is fulfilled tenfold by the reader. These are wonderful, human stories I'm grateful to turn to again and again.--Sara Lippmann "author of Lech, Doll Palace, and Jerks"

In fourteen swift and sharply observed stories, Melanie Pappadis Faranello assembles a world of odd beauty, deep uncertainty, and bracing possibility. Her characters surge forward, driven by yearnings that are idiosyncratic but also familiar to anyone. Everybody Needs Something offers visions of love, family, and fate that surprise, disrupt, and delight.--Debra Jo Immergut "Jordan Prize judge and author of You Again, The Captives, and Private Property"

In Melanie Pappadis Faranello's exquisitely composed collection, Everybody Needs Something, lives accumulate through small rebellions and timeless realizations. With an unfailing eye for the telling detail, Faranello weaves stories of intricate beauty and complexity. To read her is to discover something about the very nature of being. Transcendent and indispensable.--Michael Zapata "author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau"

About the Author

MELANIE PAPPADIS FARANELLO has authored numerous stories and essays that have appeared in various publications, including Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, StoryQuarterly, Hippocampus, Vol 1. Brooklyn, HuffPost Personal, Blackbird, StorySouth and elsewhere. Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won Key West Literary Seminars' Emerging Writers Award for Novel-in-Progress. She was a 2024 Writer-in-Residence at Monson Arts and holds her M.F.A. from The New School. She is also the founder of Poetry on the Streets. Originally from Chicago, she lives with her family in West Hartford, Connecticut, where she is a teaching artist and at work on a novel. Read more at www.melaniefaranello.com and find her on Instagram and Facebook.