Home Remedies - (Harvest Original) by Angela Pneuman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Tonsillectomies should not be performed at home, cucumbers do not make good stand-ins, and golf clubs are not for hitting your mother.

Angela Pneuman renders these unsettling truths, small and large, with blazing insight in Home Remedies. It is a startling collection of stories peopled by Christian fundamentalists traversing various stages and crises of belief, grappling with intimacies that feel like an anxious mix of longing and repulsion, relating to one another in an uneasy balance of eagerness and wariness.

From the Back Cover

"This book is as fresh and astringent as a raw secret whispered just before church."--Ron Carlson, author of A Kind of Flying
Tonsillectomies should not be attempted at home, cucumbers make lousy stand-ins, and golf clubs can be hazardous to a mother's health. Love and faith are treacherous negotiations. Mercy and malice go hand in hand. InHome RemediesAngela Pneuman renders these unsettling truths, small and large, with blazing insight and dark humor. A deeply affecting debut, the stories in this collection follow a compelling cast of characters, all of whom hail from Kentucky. A compassionate and clear-eyed look at religious faith and family ties,
Home Remedies marks the beginning of a distinguished literary career.
"I love the way Angela Pneuman's characters soldier on in their curious, comic, questioning lives. I believe in them, which is to say that their troubles seem real, and, like long-time friends, their foibles amuse and alarm me." --Antonya Nelson, author of Living to Tell

"Smart, brave and unflinchingly honest, Angela Pneuman is a writer of such flinty brilliance and such dead-on, dead-pan humor it's often hard to believe you've arrived at the end of a story until stunned by the last gesture or word."--ZZ Packer, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
"Without a doubt, Angela Pneuman is one of the most astonishingly talented young writers working today."--Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Underwater

ANGELA PNEUMAN is a recent Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University. Stories from Home Remedies have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She lives in Albany, New York. "

Review Quotes

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR HOME REMEDIES

"Smart, brave and unflinchingly honest, Angela Pneuman is a writer of such flinty brilliance and such dead-on, dead-pan humor it's often hard to believe you've arrived at the end of a story until stunned by the last gesture or word." -ZZ Packer

"Without a doubt, Angela Pneuman is one of the most astonishingly talented young writers working today. Her dark humor evokes Lorrie Moore, the richness and depth of her narratives call to mind Alice Munro, but these stories are all her own."--Julie Orringer