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by Ethan Rutherford
The stories in The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories, a collection from Ethan Rutherford, map the surprising ways in which the world we think we know can unexpectedly reveal its darker contours.
In stories that are alternately funny, persuasive, and compelling, unforgettable characters are confronted with, and battle against, the limitations of their lives.
Rutherford's work has been selected by Alice Sebold for inclusion in the volume of The Best American Short Stories that she edited, and also published in Ploughshares, One Story, and American Short Fiction.
"Starred Review" - Publishers Weekly
"Oh how I love these stories! Ethan Rutherford can slay you with humor and buoy you within the midst of tragedy. His range is amazing. Every story is 100% Grade-A storytelling. I bow down to The Peripatetic Coffin." - Alice Sebold, author of The Lucky Bones and Lucky
"This is a flat-out beautiful book of stories... Not all books of stories are page-turners, but this one is." - Charles Baxter, author of National Book Award finalist The Feast of Love
":Rutherford's wildly inventive collection is nothing short of a revelation.... no experience is beyond this very fine writer's ambitious grasp. He gives us the world with each story, with the world's full measure of heartbreak and hilarity." - Ben Fountain, author of National Book Award finalist Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
"Funny and wrenching, featuring hapless fatalists who nonetheless never stop striving, even as they continue to squander opportunities. And yet they never let us forget that there's always the possibility that they will learn--even if it's the hard way--to see beyond themselves." - Jim Shepard, author of author of National Book Award finalist Like You'd Understand, Anyway
"My desert island book. The one I will always carry with me... each story is a vessel of longing and possibility; collectively, they present a mosaic of our past and our future, reinvigorating the art of storytelling... a revelatory feat of the imagination... an incomparable, vital debut." - Paul Yoon, author of Once the Shore
"Ethan Rutherford's stories are absolutely perfect. He writes with such sensitivity and clarity about how and why things come undone and fall apart. I rarely feel this close to heartbreak, this strengthened by a writer clearly doing something special" - Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
"A confident and winning collection, every story in The Peripatetic Coffin feels necessary and true. Ethan Rutherford gets it." - Patrick DeWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers
This information about The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories 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.
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