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A stylized and otherworldly short story collection filled with sidelined characters placed at center stage. A low-ranking soldier is forced to milk a cow within enemy range. A cartoonist's daughter waits each morning to see how her father's mood dictates how he will draw her face. Grieving siblings wait to inherit one of their father's physical features after his death.
"Starred Review. Griner excels in his longer stories, one of which - "On Board the SS Irresponsible" - borders on being a masterpiece... Griner's stories shine a glaring light on the complexities of human personality and family relationships." - Kirkus
"A line from Immanent in the Last Sheaf, another masterly short piece, could serve as the collection's mission statement: 'It was better not to guess,' the protagonist tell us, 'than to guess incorrectly.'" - Publishers Weekly
"Griner seems to know everybody's secrets, and this astonishing collection sets out to reveal them." - Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake
"Paul Griner finds surprising and inventive ways to write about a wide range of sometimes uncomfortable - but always interesting - situations." - Bobbie Ann Mason, author of The Girl in the Blue Beret and In Country
This information about Hurry Please I Want to Know was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paul Griner's first book, the story collection Follow Me, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. His next two books, the novels Collectors and The German Woman, have been published in half a dozen languages. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Playboy, One Story, Tin House, Narrative, and Zoetrope, among others. He teaches at the University of Louisville.
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