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In Fun with Problems, Robert Stone demonstrates once again that he is "one of our greatest living writers" (Los Angeles Times). The pieces in this new volume vary greatly in length—some are almost novellas, others no more than a page—but all share the signature blend of longing, violence, black humor, sex and drugs that has helped Stone illuminate the dark corners of the human soul. Entire lives are laid out with remarkable precision, in captivating prose: a screenwriter carries on a decades-long affair with a beautiful actress, whose descent into addiction he can neither turn from nor share; a bored husband picks up a mysterious woman only to find that his ego has led him woefully astray; a world-beating Silicon Valley executive receives an unwelcome guest at his mansion in the hills; a scuba dive guides uneasy newlyweds to a point of no return. Fun with Problems showcases Stone's great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses - by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive - that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our very selves.
"Starred Review. Stone's evocative prose treads through the murky waters of dead dreams and waning hopes, bringing out the pathetic and nasty side of people warped by addiction, sex, violence and time." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Alienated, angry outsiders stalk the dangerous edges of their unraveling lives in the great American novelist's collection of grim short fiction." - Kirkus Reviews
"Readers who enjoy the caustic prose of Mary Gaitskill or Lee K. Abbott will gladly take this book to bed with them." - Library Journal
"In this ironically titled collection, prize-winning novelist Robert Stone delivers insightful and at times wickedly funny portraits of troubled characters sowing the seeds of their own downfall." - Shelf Awareness
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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.
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Photo: Greg Martin
Robert Stone was the acclaimed author of nine novels, and two short story collections, plus several nonfiction works.
He won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1975 for his novel Dog Soldiers and was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and once for the PEN/Faulkner Awards. Time magazine included it in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1937 to a "family of Scottish Presbyterians and Irish Catholics who made their living as tugboat workers in New York harbor," he died in January 2015
Novels
A Hall of Mirrors (1967)
Dog Soldiers (1974)
A Flag for Sunrise (1981)
Children of Light (1986)
Outerbridge Reach (1992)
Damascus Gate (1998)
Bay of Souls (2003)
Death of the Black-Haired Girl (2013)
A Step Behind (2014)...
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