Touchy Subjects: Stories

‘Excellent new collection… Her touch is so light and exuberantly inventive, her insight at once so forensic and intimate, her people so ordinary even in their oddities. … Unnervingly exact.’ – Guardian

In this sparkling collection of nineteen stories, the bestselling author of Slammerkin returns to contemporary affairs, exposing the private dilemmas that result from some of our most public controversies. A man finds God and finally wants to father a child—only his wife is now forty-two years old. A coach’s son discovers his sexuality on the football field. A repressed young woman finds liberation in her roommate’s bizarre secret.

Many of these stories involve animals and what they mean to us, or babies and whether to have them; some reimagine biblical plots in modern contexts. With characters old, young, straight, gay, and simply confused, Donoghue dazzles with her range and her ability to touch lightly but penetrate deeply into the human condition.

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PRAISE FOR EMMA DONOGHUE

"Every now and again, a writer comes along with a fully loaded brain and a nature so fanciful that she simply must spin out truly original and transporting stuff. To get lost in a book by one of these rare folks is to experience true happiness-and genuine relief that we can access such eccentric, untethered genius on a page, instead of, say, in person across the breakfast table. Emma Donoghue is such a writer."

-THE SEATTLE TIMES