Shapeshifting - by Michelle Ross (Paperback)

About the Book

With unflinching honesty and vivid, lyric prose, Ross explores the familial ties that bind us together-or, sometimes, tear us apart.

Book Synopsis

The fourteen spellbinding stories in Michelle Ross's second collection invite readers into the shadows of social-media perfectionism and the relentless cult of motherhood. A recovering alcoholic navigates the social landscape of a toddler playdate; a mother of two camps out in a van to secure her son's spot at a prestigious kindergarten; a young girl forces her friends to play an elaborate, unwinnable game. With unflinching honesty and vivid, lyric prose, Ross explores the familial ties that bind us together-or, sometimes, tear us apart.

Review Quotes

"Shapeshifting suggests that the struggle to know how to love children and how to let them go may feel similar at the pediatrician, in an abandoned laboratory, or trapped in the life you've chosen, but Ross renders those settings and the characters who inhabit them in such vivid detail that each story feels like its own new world."

- Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections