American Innovations by Rivka Galchen

A brilliant new collection of short stories from "the conspicuously talented" (Time) Rivka Galchen In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivka's Galchen's American Innovations, a young woman's furniture walks out on her. In another, the narrator feels compelled to promise to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated pains and loves of a family. The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, reimagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar" responds to John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Galchen's "The Lost Order" covertly recapitulates James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," while "The Region of Unlikeness" is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borges's "The Aleph." The title story, "American Innovations," revisits Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose." By turns realistic, fantastical, witty, and lyrical, these marvelously uneasy stories are deeply emotional and written in exuberant, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer like none other today.

- Google

The 1969th greatest fiction book of all time


This book is on the following lists:

  1. - The New Vanguard (New York Times)

Buy This Book

Name Binding Sales Rank Lowest New Lowest Used Published
American Innovations Hardcover 8108385 $8.00 $5.81
American Innovations Hardcover 2845766 $16.70 $3.96
American Innovations Paperback 11732125 $7.91 $3.77 2015
American Innovations: Stories Paperback 1021367 $13.79 $3.61 2015
American Innovations: Stories Hardcover 1424973 $8.90 $1.59 2014
American Innovations: Stories Kindle Edition 822673 $6.99 2014