Unkempt: Stories

In the seven stories and one novella collected in Unkempt, Courtney Eldridge gives life to characters of astounding originality. Probing the darker corners of the human psyche, she shows-with a sly and unexpected sense of humor-the neurotic mind at work, the skewed perspective of an alcoholic parent, the nature of sexual conquest, and the hazards of working in retail. Fresh, funny, and candid, Eldridge's writing delivers a new and marvelous vision of life.
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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR UNKEMPT

“Courtney Eldridge is one of my favorite living short-story writers. She has courage and vision like few writers, an amazing ear, and compassion like nobody else at all.When I read her, I feel better about literature and better about the world.Want to know what really makes human beings tick? Throw away everything on your bedside table and read this instead.

—RICK MOODY, author of DEMONOLOGY and THE ICE STORM

“Courtney Eldridge is one of the smartest young writers in America,and she knows how to use knives.There are echoes of Dixon here, and Moody, and Wallace, and maybe even early Carver—great technical control masking great emotional upheaval.All of these stories, after

their meanderings, their circlings and jokes and asides, deliver a measurable catharsis, and it’s all the more powerful for how painful—though that pain is wrapped and rewrapped, hidden and denied—itwas to get there.”—DAVE EGGERS, author of A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS