We're In Trouble: Stories - Hardcover

Coake, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151010943 ISBN 13: 9780151010943

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005

Synopsis

Each of the seven stories in this debut collection shows love staring at the face of death - an encounter that elicits either the best or the worst in these unforgettable characters.
"We're in Trouble," a suite of three stories, introduces this collection's theme: A boy tempts his dog too far in a game of fetch, a couple confronts the consequences of having a baby, and a terminally ill husband asks his beloved wife to help him end his misery.
With the complexity, depth, and narrative drive of a novel, these stories show love darkening and persevering as it is tried by the cold fact of death. Two troubled young people on a spontaneous romantic weekend are trapped by a fierce snowstorm in an unheated cabin in "Abandon." A father and a boy who may or may not be his estranged son drive through the night in "Cross County." A woman who married a man because of his heroism confronts the limits of her affections in "A Single Awe."
From a wife waiting for news of her husband's latest death-defying climb in "Solos," to a young musician's all-night vigil after his best friends' sudden deaths leave him the guardian of their three-year-old son in "In the Event," to a sheriff thrown into turmoil after his close friend enacts a horrifying murder-suicide in "All Through the House," Christopher Coake makes us feel the truth of his characters' lives and transforms it into cathartic art.

About this title

Review:

PRAISE FOR "WE'RE IN TROUBLE"
"Sometimes when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe . . . They're beautifully written, and they have bottom, but they're never dull and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas."--Nick Hornby, author of "A Long Way Down, "in "The Believer"
"Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme--love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death)--from seemingly every angle. A-."--"Entertainment Weekly"
PRAISE FOR "WE'RE IN TROUBLE"
Sometimes when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe . . . They’re beautifully written, and they have bottom, but they’re never dull and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas.”--Nick Hornby, author of "A Long Way Down, "in "The Believer"
Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme--love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death)--from seemingly every angle. A-.”--"Entertainment Weekly"
PRAISE FOR "WE'RE IN TROUBLE"

"Sometimes when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe . . . They're beautifully written, and they have bottom, but they're never dull and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas."--Nick Hornby, author of "A Long Way Down, "in "The Believer"

"Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme--love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death)--from seemingly every angle. A-."--"Entertainment Weekly"
PRAISE FOR"WE'RE IN TROUBLE"

"Sometimes when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe . . . They're beautifully written, and they have bottom, but they're never dull and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas."--Nick Hornby, author of"A Long Way Down, "in"The Believer"

"Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme--love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death)--from seemingly every angle. A-."--"Entertainment Weekly"
PRAISE FOR "WE'RE IN TROUBLE"
Sometimes when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe . . . They re beautifully written, and they have bottom, but they re never dull and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas. --Nick Hornby, author of "A Long Way Down, "in "The Believer"
Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme--love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death)--from seemingly every angle. A-. --"Entertainment Weekly"
"

PRAISE FOR WE'RE IN TROUBLE
Sometimes when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe . . . They re beautifully written, and they have bottom, but they re never dull and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas. --Nick Hornby, author of A Long Way Down, in The Believer
Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme--love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death)--from seemingly every angle. A-. --Entertainment Weekly
"

PRAISE FOR WE'RE IN TROUBLE

"Sometimes when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe . . . They're beautifully written, and they have bottom, but they're never dull and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas."--Nick Hornby, author of A Long Way Down, in The Believer

"Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme--love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death)--from seemingly every angle. A-."--Entertainment Weekly

From the Back Cover:

"Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death) from seemingly every angle. A-." Entertainment Weekly

From a wife waiting for news of her husband's latest death-defying climb to a sheriff thrown into turmoil after his close friend enacts a horrifying murder-suicide, Christopher Coake s unforgettable characters experience love staring in the face of death. As their love darkens and perseveres, it elicits either the best or the worst in them. With the complexity, depth, and narrative drive of a novel, Coake s extraordinary debut collection makes us feel the truth of his imperiled characters' lives and transforms it into cathartic art. We re in Trouble is at once suspenseful, empathic, and almost unbearably moving.
"Coake has . . . done something both alarming and amazing: He has taken his proximity to mortality's horrors, mined them for their truest nature, married them to a sure hand for storytelling and presented us all with a debut book of stories, We're in Trouble, that is both beautiful in its elegance and merciless in its intensity."--Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
"I've read more than a thousand stories a year for the past eight years and nothing nothing has surpassed the work of Mr. Coake. You will be stunned, you will have tears in your eyes, and you will remember these stories for the rest of your life." Otto Penzler, The Best American Mystery Stories

Christopher Coake lives in Reno, where he teaches creative writing at the University of Nevada.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0151010943
• ISBN 13: 9780151010943
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 306