Fast Lanes

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch: a short story collection that presents a tour de force of voices, offering elegantly rendered views into the lives of characters torn between the liberation of detachment and the desire to connect.

"A brilliant writer, utterly original and with an astonishing range." —Ian McEwan, New York Times bestselling author of Atonement and Lessons

Three stories are collected in this edition for the first time: in "Alma," and adolescent daughter is made the confidante of her lonely mother; "Counting" traces the history of a doomed love affair; and "Callie" evokes memories of the haunting death of a child in 1920's West Virginia. Along with the original seven stories from Fast Lanes—each told in extraordinary first person narratives that have been hailed by critics as virtuoso performances—these incandescent portraits offer windows into the lives of an entire generation of Americans, demonstrating again and again why Jayne Anne Phillips remains one of our most powerful writers."Ms. Phillips's ear is almost unerring.... As ever, she writes beautifully, capturing elusive moods with startling images and scenes." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Jayne Anne Phillips is the best short story writer since Eudora Welty."  —Nadine Gordimer

"A brilliant writer, utterly original and with an astonishing range." —Ian McEwanJAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, Quiet Dell, and Night Watch. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Winner of an Arts and Letters Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she was inducted into the Academy in 2018. A National Book Award finalist, and twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, she lives in New York and Boston.