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From the author of Daughters of the Revolution and The Bostons (winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for fiction) come eleven stories about sex and death, violence and desire, love and madness, set in a vast American landscape that ranges from the largest private residence in Manhattan to the lush rain forests and marijuana farms of Northern California.
In "Francis Bacon," an aspiring writer learns essential lessons from an aging pornographer. In "The Snake," a restless Jungian analyst sheds one existence after another. In "The Boundary," a muralist falls in love with a troubled boy from the rez. In the surreal "She Bites," a man builds an architecturally distinguished doghouse as his wife slowly transforms. And in the transcendent, three-part title story, two best friends face their strange fates, linked by a determination to wrest meaning and coherence from lives spiraling out of control.
At once philosophical and compulsively readable, Amor and Psycho dives into our darkest spaces, confronting the absurdity, poetry and brutality of human existence.
"Starred Review. Cooke's stories twist and turn, playing games with language... They leave you with something: shards of phrases; a lifetime of attitudes conveyed in a word or an aside; or odd, perfect details that stick in your mind." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Erotic, whimsical, profound... Cooke writes with passion, empathy, and considerable humor as her characters face life-changing issues of divorce, illness, self-destruction, and impending death."- Kirkus
"This is the product of a mature and considerable talent and should be enjoyed, but not taken lightly." - Booklist
"This slim volume is a definite page-turner, leaving the discerning reader with memorable characters upon which to reflect. A notable writer of both fiction and nonfiction, Cooke keeps readers aware of the travails and triumphs of their humanity." - Library Journal
This information about Amor and Psycho 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.
Carolyn Cooke's novel, Daughters of the Revolution, was named among the Top Ten Books of 2011 by the San Francisco Chronicle and among The New Yorker Magazine's "Reviewers' Favorite" books of the year. Her collection of short stories, The Bostons, was named one of the best books of the year by The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, and was a winner of the PEN/Bingham Award for fiction and a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway. Her short stories have appeared in AGNI, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and in two volumes each of Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Nation, Contemporary Literary Criticism and in New California Writing 2011. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, she teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where she lives with her husband, the poet and essayist Randall Babtkis. See more at http://www.carolyncooke.com
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