What Burns: Stories -

Dale Peck

Soho Press

2019

320 páginas

10h 40m

ISBN-13: 9781641290821

Written over the course of twenty-five years, the stories in What Burns examine the the extremes of desire against a backdrop of family, class, and mortality.

In “Bliss,” a young man befriends the convicted felon who murdered his mother when he was only a child. In “Not Even Camping Is Like Camping Anymore,” a teenaged boy fends off the advances of a five-year-old his mother babysits. And in “Dues,” a man discovers that everything he owns is borrowed from someone else—including his time on earth.

Walking the tightrope between tenderness and violence that has defined Peck’s work since the publication of his first novel, Martin and John, through his most recent, Night Soil, What Burns reveals Peck’s mastery of the short form as well as the novel.