A clever and engaging collection of “darkly funny, sexy, and very smart” stories about women on the brink of disaster—and the edge of grace (Tom Perrotta). The women featured in these stories have one thing in They’re all having a terrible day. There’s the housewife so entranced by the pristine order of her neighbor’s belongings that she can’t stop herself from breaking into their home. There’s the mother easing her young son through the trauma of a murder, suddenly confronted with the reappearance of his father. There’s the middle-aged woman stuck in a coffee-chain job alongside snotty college kids, the talent manager supervising a corral of misguided young stars, and the spiky-haired artist who literally dumps her slacker fiancé—from a moving car—before engaging in an ill-advised fling in Vegas. Janice Shapiro has created a cast of utterly distinct outsiders, yet her earthy warmth and asymmetrical humor ring through them all. Her gift for pitch-perfect dialogue—along with her instinctual ease in writing about such fraught topics as commercial sex, death, and the everyday tragedies of growing older—makes her voice one to be tough-minded, sardonic, intimate, and free.
Author
Janice Shapiro studied film at UCLA where she won first prize in The Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting Competition. The short films she directed were screened widely at film festivals around the world and she was a recipient of an AFI Filmmakers Grant. She has written scripts for numerous studios and independent producers including the cult film, Dead Beat that she co-wrote with her husband, Adam Dubov. Janices short stories have been published in The North American Review, and The Santa Monica Review. A graphic memoir of hers was included in the anthology, What Were We Thinking? published by St. Martins press. Another graphic memoir appeared in The Seattle Review. Bummer and Other Stories is her first book. She is currently working on a novel, Bad Baseball, a second collection of short stories, a collection of food essays entitled, Eat Like Me, and a book length graphic memoir, Crushable My Life In Crushes From Ricky Nelson to Viggo Mortensen. Janice lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and dog. "
