All the Anxious Girls on Earth Stories

by GARTNER, ZSUZSI

• ISBN13: 9780385499118
• ISBN10: 0385499116
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-20
• Publisher: Anchor

Summary

This collection of stories marks the debut of a startingly original new writer. Zsuzsi Gartner's exuberant prose gives voice to unforgettable characters in search of hope and meaning as they cope with indifferent relationships, lackluster jobs, and a gnawing sense of dread in a world gone numb. A woman calls in fake bomb threats from the nineteenth floof of a bank tower as revenge against her ex-lover. The mother of a girl killed by a teenage urban guerilla thrives spectacularly in her industrious grief, transforming herself into a forgiveness guru and talk-show host. Lured into the wilderness by her desire for a man who rebuilds vintage airplanes, a young woman finds she lusts more for biscotti and city sidewalks. A small heroic child makes a guileless request for pajamas and creates a psychic storm at the center of her anxious, achievement-mad parents' lives. Rendered in a jittery, jazzed-up proze that has been compared to that of Lorris Moore and Mary Flanagan, thse stories brillantly capture the pathos, beauty, and alienation of contemporary life and signal the arrival of a writer to watch.

Author Biography

Zsuzsi Gartner is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer who has worked as a senior editor at <i>Saturday Night</i> magazine, books editor at <i>The Georgia Straight</i>, and as a newspaper reporter and current affairs TV producer. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines as ell as in <i>Saturday Night</i>, <i>Western Living</i>, and<i> The Canadian Forum</i>. She grew up in Calgary and has lived and worked in Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Table of Contents

How to Survive in the Bush	11	(12)
The Tragedy of Premature Death among Geniuses	23	(10)
City of my dreams	33	(31)
Pest Control for Dummies™	64	(26)
boys growing	90	(14)
Measuring Death in Column Inches (a nine-week manual for girl rim pigs)	104	(24)
The Nature of Pure Evil	128	(16)
Anxious Objects	144	(9)
Odds that, all things considered, she'd someday be happy	153	(46)
acknowledgements	199