Greyhounds - by Emma Smith-Stevens (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In poignant and vigorous prose, Greyhounds follows characters driven by their fiercest impulses--navigating obsession and control, lust and longing, and a desperate hunger for intimacy and connection.

A couple buys a Betta fish in the hopes it will solve their marital problems. A young girl, envious of her friend's terminal illness, begins fabricating symptoms of her own. Catalyzed by guilt and unnameable desire, a husband and wife begin to drive incessantly, months after hitting a teenage boy with their car. And while her widowed neighbor watches, a woman who has long struggled with hoarding finds her life transformed when she begins accumulating greyhounds.

Grappling with identity crises, sexual revelations, and secrets both tender and ruinous, Smith-Stevens's debut short story collection invites readers to reckon with the familiar through a kaleidoscopic lens--a captivating collection for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Marie-Helene Bertino.

Review Quotes

"I've been a fan of Emma Smith-Stevens since the publication of her novel, The Australian. She's a brave writer and gifted with the precision stylistic attack that I associate with the short-fiction renaissance of the 1980s. Greyhounds, her new collection of short stories, is a most welcome and satisfying thing. It digs deep on the ache of being human but likewise does not stint on the laughs that sometimes accompany this ache. I admire this book." -Rick Moody, author of The Long Accomplishment.

About the Author

Emma Smith-Stevens is the author of The Australian. Her writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.