Things That Pass for Love by Allison Amend

From the Publisher

"Allison Amend is a gifted storyteller, whose view of contemporary life is often wonderfully acute, original, and surprising."-Alison Lurie, author of Foreign Affairs: a Novel

Allison Amend's writing is both thoughtful and entertaining, with a strong sense of humor throughout.

Allison Amend was born in Chicago, Illinois, on a day when the Cubs beat the Mets 20. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. While there, she learned never to live downwind from a pig farm and how to put English on a cue ball. She lives in New York, writing and teaching fiction.

What People Are Saying

Alison Lurie
"Allison Amend is a gifted storyteller, whose view of contemporary life is often wonderfully acute, original, and surprising."--(Alison Lurie, author of Foreign Affairs: a Novel)

Thisbe Nissen
"Nobody writes like Allison Amend-partly because Allison Amend doesn't write like she's only one person. The stories in this fearlessly funny, insanely intelligent, delicately wrought collection are so varied, so accomplished, you will think you are reading an anthology of many masters' works."--(Thisbe Nissen, author of The Good People of New York and Osprey Island)

Allison Smith
"I love this book. The stories in Amend's Things that Pass for Love are such good company that I found myself reading more and more slowly so that the collection wouldn't end. Amend's voice is so compelling, easeful, and polished you feel that the stories almost rise up off the page and tell themselves. And, as we all know, the hardest thing a writer can do is make it look easy."--(Allison Smith, author of Name All the Animals)

Hannah Tinti
"Allison Amend is a gifted storyteller-no, more than gifted. Her writing is powerful enough to create its own kind of weather. Her characters are so real it's as if you could reach between the pages and shake hands with them. If you want to read good stories, read this book."--(Hannah Tinti, author of Animal Crackers and editor of One-Story Magazine)

Judith Claire Mitchell
"The people in Allison Amend's transporting stories-a teacher less inured to human suffering than her fifth-graders, a little boy and his father who are meeting for the first time, an investigator of cults-are smart, funny, and achingly vulnerable. I read this book in a single sitting, unable to resist going on to the next story and then the next and then the next."--(Judith Claire Mitchell, author of The Last Day of the War)

Justin Tussing
"Like John Cheever's enormous radio, Allison Amend's stories channel disturbing voices from that unknowable world that exists outside our doors. First collections are often like petit fours, precious and sweet. Amend has served up something much heartier, a plate-crowding smorgasbord."--(Justin Tussing, author of The Best People in the World)

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