Big World

A short story collection full of powerful prose and remarkably genuine characters from the author of "The Last Days of California" The characters in Mary Miller s debut short story collection, "Big World," are at once autonomous and lonesome, possessing both a longing to connect with those around them and a cynicism regarding their ability to do so, whether they re holed up in a motel room in Pigeon Forge with an air-gun-shooting boyfriend, as in Fast Trains, or navigating the rooms of their house with their dad after their mother s death as in Leak. Mary Miller s writing is unapologetically honest and efficient, and the gut-wrenching directness of her prose is reminiscent of Mary Gaitskill and Courtney Eldridge, if Gaitskill s and Eldridge s stories were set in the south and reeked of spilled beer and cigarette smoke."