Full name: The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories

Author: Alasdair Gray Year: 2003 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Short Stories, Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781841956268 1841956260

Fans of the work of Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut, George Saunders, and T. Coraghessan Boyle will revel in Alasdair Gray's masterful, witty collection. Gray's stories defy genre, and his angular, playful style, prodigious wit, and razor-sharp intellect are matched by his remarkable skill with the short-story form. In "Job's Skin Game," the narrator humbly tells his life story like the evenings news. During a moment of awkward revelation, he shares the strangely exquisite pleasure he receives from scratching at the skin condition he's developed since losing his two sons in the Twin Towers tragedy and a small fortune in the dot-com meltdown. In "Big Pockets with Button Flaps," a wily old man teases and taunts a pair of punk teenage girls as their confrontation takes on social implication through lightning-fast transfers of power and wit. The Ends of Our Tethers is vintage Gray--accessible, experimental, mischievous, wide ranging, beautifully written, and wise. Similar books: Other Stories by Ali Smith Ten Tales Tall and True by Alasdair Gray Not Not While the Giro by James Kelman Unlikely Stories, Mostly by Alasdair Gray Descent of Man by T. Coraghessan Boyle The World and Other Places by Jeanette Winterson Harmony of the World by Charles Baxter Hotel of the Saints by Ursula Hegi Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist Licks of Love by John Updike Faithless by Joyce Carol Oates Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom If You Liked School, You'll Love Work by Irvine Welsh Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann The View from the Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie Birds of America by Lorrie Moore Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau