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Published Aug 2013
240 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
The bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake returns with a wondrous collection of dreamy, strange, and magical stories.
Truly beloved by readers and critics alike, Aimee Bender has become known as something of an enchantress whose lush prose is "moving, fanciful, and gorgeously strange" (People), "richly imagined and bittersweet" (Vanity Fair), and "full of provocative ideas" (The Boston Globe). In her deft hands, "relationships and mundane activities take on mythic qualities" (The Wall Street Journal).
In this collection, Bender's unique talents sparkle brilliantly in stories about people searching for connection through love, sex, and family - while navigating the often painful realities of their lives. A traumatic event unfolds when a girl with flowing hair of golden wheat appears in an apple orchard, where a group of people await her. A woman plays out a prostitution fantasy with her husband and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life. An ugly woman marries an ogre and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children. Two sisters travel deep into Malaysia, where one learns the art of mending tigers who have been ripped to shreds.
I
n these deeply resonant stories - evocative, funny, beautiful, and sad - we see ourselves reflected as if in a funhouse mirror. Aimee Bender has once again proven herself to be among the most imaginative, exciting, and intelligent writers of our time.
"Bender became a bestselling novelist with The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, but her new collection returns readers to her real forte: short stories that combine gnomic postmodern prose with whimsical fairy tale reveries." - Publishers Weekly
"Bender's gifts as an author are prodigious, and with each story, she moves the reader in surprising, not to say startling, ways." - Kirkus
This information about The Color Master was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Jerry Bauer
Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) which won the SCIBA award for best fiction, and an Alex Award, and The Color Master, a NY Times Notable book for 2013. Her latest novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, is forthcoming from Doubleday in July 2020. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages.
Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and more, as well as heard on PRI's "This American Life"and "Selected Shorts".
She lives in ...
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