ONE OF TIME'S 10 BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2020. Longlisted for the
Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Bustle,
Good Housekeeping, the New York Public Library, Library Journal,
Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Tor.com
**
As enchanting as fairy tales, as mysterious as dreams, these exquisitely
composed fictions are as urgent and original as any being written
today." --Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend, winner of the 2018
National Book Award for Fiction**
**
An urgent and unsettling collection of women on the verge from Laura van
den Berg, author of The Third Hotel**
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg's first story collection
since her prizewinning book The Isle of Youth, draws readers into a
world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the
mouth and the mind. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories
confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America
with van den Berg's trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from
the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City,
Sicily, and Iceland, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to
our current moment, and to the fears we reveal to no one but ourselves.
In "Lizards," a man mutes his wife's anxieties by giving her a
LaCroix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman
poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a
choice that brings about strange and destructive consequences, while in
"Karolina," a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the
aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her
violent brother.
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears presents a collection of women on the verge,
trying to grasp what's left of life: grieving, divorced, and hyperaware,
searching, vulnerable, and unhinged, they exist in a world that deviates
from our own only when you look too closely. With remarkable control and
transcendent talent, van den Berg dissolves, in the words of the
narrator of "Slumberland," "that border between magic and annihilation,"
and further establishes herself as a defining fiction writer of our
time.
