Greyhounds - by Emma Smith-Stevens (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Poignant and humorous, Greyhounds follows characters desperately navigating desire, obsession, and the minefields of power dynamics in relationships of all stripes.

A couple buys a Betta fish in the hopes it will salvage their drowning marriage. A young girl, envious of her friend's terminal illness, begins fabricating symptoms of her own. Months after a fatal collision, a husband and wife begin driving incessantly, haunted by the memory of the teenage boy they killed. And while her widowed neighbor watches, a woman who has long struggled with hoarding finds her life forever changed when she begins acquiring greyhounds.

Unflinching and audacious, Smith-Stevens's debut short story collection compels readers to reckon with the familiar--the very self--through a new lens, a treasure for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Marie-Helene Bertino.

Review Quotes

"Greyhounds is a simply stunning collection. I like to be surprised; I like a good, authentic gut punch; I like a succinct sentence that makes me gasp because it's so true and perfect; I love messy, interesting women characters. Greyhounds delivers in all these ways, in spades."

--Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

"Greyhounds is a brilliant new addition into the canon of weird short fiction, sharp and finely attuned to how strange it is to be a human being. Emma Smith-Stevens is the ideal chronicler of--and guide to--our alienated times, funny and profound, uncanny and wise, like Charon with a sense of humor."

--Rachel Khong, My Dear You

"Smith-Stevens is a brave writer and gifted with the precision stylistic attack that I associate with the short-fiction renaissance of the 1980s. Greyhounds is a most welcome and satisfying thing. It digs deep into the ache of being human but does not stint on the laughs that sometimes accompany this ache. I admire this book."

--Rick Moody, 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.