Mother Box and Other Tales

“These lucid stories hearken to the spiritual and cerebral fiction of Katherine Mansfield and Joy Williams.  They breathtakingly face what comes next in the world—whether terrible snout or beautiful child—hallucinating what is entirely real.”—Kate Bernheimer, author of The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold and Horse, Flower, Bird

“Sarah Blackman is a wizard at rendering the odd intricacies of the domestic sphere. Her insights are stunning, her eye is keen, and her sentences are unbudgeably right. An excellent debut.”—Noy Holland, author of Swim for the Little One First

“It is a triumph when a sentiment as banal as “One must travel around and pick things up and put them down again” nevertheless sounds profound; or when a sentiment as bizarre as “She would be a body and next, who knew?, a house” seems undeniable and even inevitable. This can only be a result of Blackman’s carefully measured prose. And when it comes to storytelling and the enrapture of her audience, Blackman again excels. Consider, for instance, the eerie “Many Things, Including This,” or “Conversation,” or “The Dinner Party,” all tales that kept this reader turning pages, eager to dispel the dread that hangs over them and to find out what happens next.” —Kenyon Review Online