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by Robyn Ryle
With humor and grace, Ryle depicts a quirky cast of characters and their post-pandemic hopes, fears, gripes, and longings in this engaging collection of linked stories.
One foggy morning, an email appears in inboxes across the small town of Lanier, Indiana. "Invitation to Participate: Sexual Practices in a Small Midwestern Town," the subject line reads. A link leads to an extensive survey. Street by street and resident by resident-from the basketball coach in retirement with a bad lung, to the bartender finding her way to writing, to the health department worker with a vendetta against the hot-dog vendor-the email opens up the secret (and not so secret) lives of one community, and reveals the surprising complexity of love, friendship, and belonging in our post-Covid times.
"Comparisons to Olive Kitteridge are inevitable, but the tone and expansiveness of this novel-in-stories hark back to Spoon River Anthology (if not Chaucer). Thoroughly refreshing: an astute portrait of contemporary small-town America that's genuinely fun to read." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"I've not been this undone and awed by a short story collection since The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw. Robyn Ryle proves that narrative fearlessness, ambition and radical play reach their highest resonance when foundationed on an ungodly talent and stunning skill." ―Kiese Laymon, award-winning author of Heavy: An American Memoir
"Robyn Ryle knows her small town inside and out, celebrating the strange and mundane equally. Sex of the Midwest isn't about sex so much as love and loneliness, and, ultimately, belonging." ―Stewart O'Nan, author of Emily, Alone
This information about Sex of the Midwest 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.
Robyn Ryle is a writer and a professor of sociology and gender studies at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana. She received her PhD in sociology from Indiana University-Bloomington and is originally from northern Kentucky. She is the author of a young adult novel, Fair Game, about a girls' basketball team that challenges the boys to a high-stakes game, and of Throw Like a Girl, Cheer Like a Boy: The Evolution of Gender, Identity, and Race in Sports about the history of sports from a sociological perspective. Find more at robynryle.com.
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