From a young writer whose stories have graced the pages of today's most exciting literary journals, comes a masterfully elegant, sexy, and surprising debut. The publication of Rachel Sherman's first book heralds the arrival of a singularly fresh and remarkably assured new voice. In this brilliantly original story collection, she evokes the wonders and horrors of a young woman's life, from girl to teenager to adult, through crushes, sex, family, and the agonies and ecstasies of finding one's way. Sherman's beautifully direct and deceptively simple prose produces accessible, shockingly real narratives that combine a disarming sexual edge with great sensitivity and humor. From a high school girl's crush on her female teacher, to a family's serenity threatened by the presence of a sexy Danish au pair, to a pubescent girl's sexually outrageous soldier pen-pal, all the way to a young couple's horrifying yet life-affirming experience of learning to love their brain-injured newborn twins, this collection wends its way around the deepest of struggles with unusual frankness and wisdom. Fans of A. M. Homes, Mary Gaitskill, Mona Simpson, and Rick Moody will be thrilled at this auspicious and noteworthy debut.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In a highly promising debut collection of stories, Sherman writes of alienated lower-end white suburbia in a manner that shifts perspectives with an effortlessness that mitigates her characters' sad stuckness. In the opener, "The Reaper," Beth's assignment for a high school psych class—correspond with a soldier stationed abroad—yields not only the expected ("SEND ME A PICTURE OF YOUR NAKED TITS," he writes, claiming to be possessed by the title figure), but an ending reasserts her fantasies of her future with a starkly intimate tenderness. In the tale that follows, an already bad marriage is pushed to the breaking point by having children (twins with birth or genetic defects—it's deliberately left unsaid), by the hot neighbor girl (with intentionally stereotyped hot black boyfriend) and by other facts of life in a nascent exurb; there, everyone's longings feel as shoddily and provisionally housed as the denizens themselves. By the time one reaches the last story, the weirdly anachronistic, cross-cultural sex-with-spinster tale, "Jewish Hair," one has given up any resistance to Sherman's grotesques and settled all the way in to a very uncomfortable place. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Careful and poignant, and mercifully short on melodrama. -- Kirkus, March 15, 2006
Hilarious and disturbing . . .deals with sexuality on candid terms, depicting the line between what we want and know with precision. -- Time Out Chicago, April 28, 2006
Laser-cut narratives . . . Full of great, quirky lines. -- Time Out New York, May 4, 2006
Hilarious and disturbing . . .deals with sexuality on candid terms, depicting the line between what we want and know with precision. -- Time Out Chicago, April 28, 2006
Laser-cut narratives . . . Full of great, quirky lines. -- Time Out New York, May 4, 2006
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Totally stays with you,
By Anonymous "Anon" (New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The First Hurt: Stories (Paperback)
I love short stories, and these are some of the best I've read in a long time. They're sort of like A.M. Homes or Mary Gaitskill's stories: Funny and haunting and good at getting at what it's like when you encounter the threats and promises of the adult world as you grow up.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great collection,
By
This review is from: The First Hurt: Stories (Paperback)
The women and girls found within the stories of Rachel Sherman's short story collection, The First Hurt are flawed--internally, externally--messed up, marked, imperfect. And that is what makes them so appealing. Within these pages, they show us their dark hearts, their secret bumps, the skin that they pick at. They show us what makes them tick, which is--as the narrator explains in the title story--the first hurt: "My grandmother has only seen me from my neck up. She has never even caught a peek of my terrain of secret skin. On my chest, my back, my arms, I have things growing at the base of me that only I can feel the first hurt of."
And to touch herself in these places, to pick at herself and bring on the hurt is to show herself love. She says: "It's like magic: you touch your skin with the things you were given--hands and oil and pores. All you are doing is wiping yourself with love." Shame and pain are equal to love--this is terrain I am quite familiar with, as, I would guess, are many of us. All in all, it's a great collection and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unique perspectives,
By
This review is from: The First Hurt: Stories (Paperback)
First off, I have to admit that I always read the author's biography before I read a book. As much as I recommend this excellent collection of short stories, I hate knowing that Sherman is only two years older than me. She more than satisfactorily represents each of the different narrators, who vary from a young female camp counselor to an unhappily married father of twin infants. Each of the stories is inviting and reassuring in it's own distinctive way. Despite the seemingly differing subject matters, they all offer a unique perspective which leads readers to believe that as strange as things may seem, everything is perfectly normal in their own ways. I don't know of many better compliments that that - the ability to write the ridiculously weird in a completely believable manner.
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