Man V. Nature: Stories - Softcover

Cook, Diane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062333119 ISBN 13: 9780062333117

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2015

Synopsis

San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of the Year

Boston Globe's "Best Fiction of 2014"

Roxane Gay's Top Ten Books of the Year

An Amazon Best Short Story Collection of 2014

An iBook Best of 2014

A refreshingly imaginative, daring debut collection of stories which illuminates with audacious wit the complexity of human behavior, as seen through the lens of the natural world.

Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive, but survive. In "Girl on Girl," a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can't have in "Meteorologist Dave Santana." And in the title story, a long fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. In Diane Cook's perilous worlds, the quotidian surface conceals an unexpected surreality that illuminates different facets of our curious, troubling, and bewildering behavior.

Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world: a pack of not-needed boys take refuge in a murky forest and compete against each other for their next meal; an alpha male is pursued through city streets by murderous rivals and desirous women; helpless newborns are snatched by a man who stalks them from their suburban yards. Through these characters Cook asks: What is at the root of our most heartless, selfish impulses? Why are people drawn together in such messy, complicated, needful ways? When the unexpected intrudes upon the routine, what do we discover about ourselves?

As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.

About this title

Review:

"What I like most about these stories is that many of them are dispatches from the end of the world, and it turns out to be a surprisingly familiar place."--Ira Glass, Host, "This American Life"

"Diane Cook's writing is sharp, bawdy, bold and often hilarious. Her stories are refreshingly crude and her imagination is unbounded. Like her characters, Cook does what she wants. Her world is another universe, where people are wilder."--Rebecca Curtis, author of TWENTY GRAND: AND OTHER TALES OF LOVE AND MONEY

"Masterful...Each darkly comic modern fable reveals our societal preoccupations -- with status, sex, motherhood, belonging -- for what they really are: thin veneers over our ever-present animal selves, ready to crack at the merest provocation. A book that'll grab your attention and keep you thinking."--Helene Wecker, author of THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI

"Diane Cook's stories are like high-wattage bulbs strung across a sinister, dark land. Man V. Nature is equal parts dazzle and depth."--Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born

"Man V. Nature could also be called Diane Cook V. The Challenges of Writing Fresh, Invigorating Fiction in Our Age. In the latter contest, Cook crushes. Here is a bold debut."--Sam Lipsyte, author of HOME LAND

"MAN V. NATURE is as close to experiencing a Picasso as literature can get: the worlds in Diane Cook's impressive debut are bizarre, vertiginous, funny, pushed to the extreme-but just familiar enough in their nuances of the human condition to evoke an irresistible, around-the-corner reality."--Tea Obreht, author of THE TIGER'S WIFE

"Lively, apocalypse-tinged tales...Cook mines the moments that precede the losses-when the battles are truly raging-and it's in them that she finds great beauty and strangeness...And, in the end, this collection suggests, meaning might be worth the battle."--New York Times Book Review

"[Cook] puts forth idiosyncratic and twisted conceits, but delivers the narrative goods when it comes to depicting the tragic, emotional lives of her characters... Like the best kind of fiction, the reader is left with much to think about within the broad realms of sex, death, love and friendship."--San Francisco Chronicle

"A dark pleasure...In 'Meteorologist Dave Santana' sex happens less often than the desperate, older woman (the meteorologist's neighbor) would like. Cook is a young woman imagining an older woman's need, and not charitably. But if Cook is anything like me, that desperate neighbor is herself. I've never really felt young."--Miranda July, Goodreads "Good Minds Suggest"

"Here's a good rule: If Diane Cook wrote it, read it...Safety is tenuous, if not an illusion, in her thoughtful, unsettling, and darkly funny collection."--Boston Globe

From the Back Cover:

A Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle "Best Book of the Year"

Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive but also survive. In "Girl on Girl," a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can't have in "Meteorologist Dave Santana." And in the title story, a long-fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world.

As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0062333119
• ISBN 13: 9780062333117
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288