Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2017
240 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
From the award-winning author of Music Through the Floor and Model Home, a riveting and profoundly moving story collection by a writer "uncannily in tune with the heartbreak and absurdity of domestic life" (Los Angeles Times).
A boy on the edge of adolescence fears his mother might be a robot; a psychotically depressed woman is entrusted with taking her niece and nephew trick-or-treating; a reluctant dad brings his baby to a coke-fueled party; a teenage boy tries to prevent his mother from putting his estranged father's dogs to sleep. Ranging from a youth arts camp to an aging punk band's reunion tour, from a dystopian future where parents no longer exist to a ferociously independent bookstore, Last Day on Earth revolves around the endlessly complex, frequently surreal system that is family.
Eric Puchner, the author hailed as "technically gifted and emotionally insightful" (The New York Times Book Review), and someone who "puts the story back in short story" (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review), delivers a gloriously original, utterly memorable collection that invokes both the comedy and tragedy of our lifelong endeavor to come of age.
"Starred Review. Without fundamentally challenging the traditional short story structure, the author finds a way to bend it to suit a skewed and fantastic vision of the world." - Kirkus
"Puchner deftly captures the nuances of human interactions, and while characters in the nine tales often stumble at the crossroads, there remains the hope that one day they may find the answers they seek." - Booklist
"Ray Bradbury meets Tom Perrotta in the new collection by Puchner ... which blends science fiction with the all-too-real suburban horrors of deadbeat dads, unsupervised teens, and the onset of mental illness." - Publishers Weekly
"Last Day on Earth is a direct hit to the solar plexus that manages to be completely entertaining ... I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a collection more. There is not a false note in this book." - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest
"Pushing the bounds of the Richter Scale, the nine stories in Last Day on Earth are going to shake up the story world." - Adam Johnson, author of Fortune Smiles
"These stories allow us to look at our own lives more closely and with more courage and understanding - a poignant and unforgettable collection from a great storyteller." - Yiyun Li, author of Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life
This information about Last Day on Earth 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.
Eric Puchner is the author of the collection Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the California Book Award and the NYPL Young Lions of Fiction Award, and of the novel Model Home, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize. Eric is a former Stegner Fellow, a Pushcart Prize winner and winner of an award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies including Best American Short Stories, Zoetrope, Best American Non-Required Reading, Tin House, and Granta. His personal essays appear regularly in GQ, Medium, and elsewhere. Eric is a professor in the writing seminars at Johns Hopkins. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.
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