Inappropriate Random: Stories on Sex and Love

Editor Amy Prior explains, "For the single girl ... relationships are becoming a much trickier business, fraught with complications and confusions previous generations probably never could have predicted. The outcome: there are now fewer ground rules in love. The moral: we just have to make them." In one story, the narrator is "aghast" when a man she doesn't know thanks her for sleeping with him. In another, a woman sends her resume for a girlfriend position-and withstands multiple rounds of interviews. Another pursues a one-night stand across the Atlantic. There's the strictly casual arrangement, the necrophile, and the chatroom romance. Well beyond the rosy chicklit stereotypes, these stories show how pleasure and chaos make strange bedfellows. The collection includes stories by Lynne Tillman, whose novel No Lease on Life was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Bonnie Greer, who has written plays for the stage in Chicago, New York, and London; Elizabeth Graver, whose stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories; and several other award-winning writers.

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This post-Bridged Jones collection of short fiction by established and emerging American and British women writers takes a hard look at love today--exposing its flaws with unflinching often hilarious, candor.