Man V Nature: Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2015: From the Booker-shortlisted author of The New Wilderness - Softcover

Cook, Diane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780748159 ISBN 13: 9781780748153

Publisher: Oneworld Publications, 2015

Synopsis

Man V. Nature

About this title

Review:

A knockout ... every single story could make a great movie.

(New York Times Book Review)

Astonishing.

(Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist)

As close to experiencing a Picasso as literature can get.  

(Téa 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)

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 may be Diane Cook s first book, but the former This American Life producer s work is impressively precocious making it our favourite short-story collection of October.

(GQ)

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)

This debut story collection takes the familiar narrative conflict and applies it to contemporary characters. The capriciousness of the natural world in Cook s stories colours them with a Romantic, almost surreal light that fans of Megan Mayhew Bergman are sure to appreciate.  

(Huffington Post,)

[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)

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)

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,)

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)

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)

A dark pleasure ... In Meteorologist Dave Santana sex happens less often than the desperate, older woman (the meteorologist s neighbour) 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 neighbour is herself. I ve never really felt young.'

(Miranda July, Goodreads)

'Seethes with heat, rejection and twisted perception ... I found myself enthralled by all of the stories in this collection. Not only are they surprising, but also fresh, funny, sad, often surreal and oddly true.'

(Omnivoracious)
&# --New York Times Book Review

This past month I discovered Diane Cook and had many moments of story-delight, really just too many to count, because Diane Cook is that good ... Cook s writing is lively and frank.  

--(Impose Magazine)

Irresistible reading ... The author probes her characters psychological depths in weird and wonderful ways ... With Man v. Nature Cook makes a bold, original debut.

--(San Jose Mercury News)

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: Oneworld Publications
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1780748159
• ISBN 13: 9781780748153
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272