Overview

Short stories that follow unexpected connections and tell of queer life in America. Winner of the 2023 Autumn House Fiction Prize, Near Strangers is a collection of eight tightly crafted short stories filled with unexpected connections and set against the backdrop of everyday life. These stories center on resilient female protagonists and offer a view into queer life in America outside of its major coastal cities. The characters in Marian Crotty's collection are searching—for understanding, acceptance, or forgiveness. In the title story, an elderly rape crisis volunteer's advocacy for a survivor leads her to reexamine her role in estrangement from her son; in ""Halloween,"" a queer teen is counseled through heartbreak by her unlucky-in-love grandmother; and in ""Family Resemblance,"" a group of families whose children share the same sperm donor is disrupted by the arrival of a minor celebrity. While marginalization, loneliness, and bigotry hover in the distance of Near Strangers, the book's tone is hopeful and invites readers to reflect on our shared human experience with empathy.

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9781637681008

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Reviews

"""I loved spending time with the narrators of these eight stories, young people who pretend to be misanthropic but are actually deeply in love with the world. Funny, soulful, wry, and more vulnerable than they intend to be, coming of age in the death throes of capitalism, at the rise of gender fluidity, doing their best to forge an identity at an increasingly precarious time.""--Pam Houston, author of ""Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country"""

"""Crotty’s second collection shares the everyday struggles and joys of women and girls peppered through Middle America. . . . Crotty repeatedly signals that it is not just all right, but good, to realize your perception of someone is fundamentally misaligned with their perception of themself; her characters make confident assumptions, feel surprised, back up, and reacquaint themselves with one another, becoming wiser and more tolerant with each misjudgment and readjustment. Eight heartening reminders that there are few connections impossible to forge or mend."" * Kirkus * “I loved spending time with the narrators of these eight stories, young people who pretend to be misanthropic but are actually deeply in love with the world. Funny, soulful, wry, and more vulnerable than they intend to be, coming of age in the death throes of capitalism, at the rise of gender fluidity, doing their best to forge an identity at an increasingly precarious time.” -- Pam Houston, author of ""Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country"""

"“I loved spending time with the narrators of these eight stories, young people who pretend to be misanthropic but are actually deeply in love with the world. Funny, soulful, wry, and more vulnerable than they intend to be, coming of age in the death throes of capitalism, at the rise of gender fluidity, doing their best to forge an identity at an increasingly precarious time.” -- Pam Houston, author of ""Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country"""

Author Information

Marian Crotty’s debut short story collection What Counts as Love, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her short stories have appeared in venues including the Kenyon Review, The Sun, Ploughshares, and Best American Short Stories 2020. She has received fellowships or scholarships from Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the US Fulbright Program. She lives in Baltimore, where she is an associate professor of writing at Loyola University Maryland and a contributing editor at The Common.  

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