An immaculate conception triggers an armed response. A mother chases away her son’s imaginary friend, only to lament her absence. A new hire, visited by his company’s wellness consultant, feels his sanity unraveling. A Norwich terrier recounts three generations of family trauma, unaware that he is on the way to be put down.
The thirteen stories of this follow-up to Breath Like the Wind at Dawn, “Jacobsen’s astonishing debut” (Alastair Mabbott, The Herald), unfold across an array of settings and times, shifting fluidly between registers and vernaculars to explore loss in its myriad forms and along the way unearthing empathy for characters who range from endearing to indefensible.
Notices
“A terrific collection—wide, deep, and way hipper than John Irving. Jacobsen writes about big issues and small towns, but he always writes beautifully…. a writer worth discovering.”
—Gideon Leek, in The Village Voice
“[Devin Jacobsen has a] willingness to experiment. He’s not afraid to take out the English language for rambling country drives, his excursions sometimes touched by hairpin turns…. Perhaps no one since John Kennedy Toole has marshaled such a menagerie of characters and settings to tell a tale.”
—Danny Heitman, in The Times-Picayune
“If for nothing else, you should read Devin Jacobsen’s short story collection The Summer We Ate Off the China for its wonderful prose…. We are in a similar, slightly deranged world to the early stories of Will Self. The grains of the ordinary are inverted and perverted…. This is a book about language and its power, and the more enjoyable and interesting for it.”
—Patrick Maxwell, in The Big Issue
Devin Jacobsen was born and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He currently lives in Paris.