People Like You — Margaret Malone

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Citation from 2016 PEN Hemingway Award judges: “In plainspoken American speech, with great delicacy and wit, the nine stories in Margaret Malone’s People Like You constantly beguile and surprise. With Chekhov they share both compassion and brevity; they share with Carver and Beattie a confidence in the unforced sentiment of unadorned prose; and in their matter-of-fact humor, which is often laugh-out-loud funny, they tap a long tradition of American humorists stretching from Mark Twain to Lorrie Moore. What sets them apart are Malone’s protagonists: dark, troubled women unafraid to puncture the pieties or to confront the void. Three of these stories involve a beleaguered wife named Cheryl whose life gains real emotional heft despite the often absurd predicaments she finds herself in, predicaments that look and feel all too much like real life. That is the great pleasure here: these artful stories have the force of truth in every line.” (Judges Joshua Ferris, Alexandra Marshall, and Jay Parini)

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Citation from 2016 Balcones Fiction Prize:“Margaret Malone’s People Like You is a masterfully minimalist collection of lives lived poorly but with the best of intentions. Her stories are powerful, sad, and plain-spoken, and this debut collection takes the normative-yet-desperate circuits of the day-to-day that Bobbie Anne Mason and Frederick Barthelme brought to the forefront of American short fiction and makes them both new again and powerfully affecting. These are marvelous and worthy stories, and very much deserving of recognition.” (Judge John Blair, author of American Standard)

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“Margaret Malone’s characters are like Miranda July’s without the financial resources: fiercely funny and keenly unhappy, and wanly persistent in their belief in their capacity to change even as they remain expert at observing, as if from afar, their own genius for self-sabotage. People Like You is wonderful on how much we need each other and let each other down, and how despite that and against all odds we grow into loving one another.” —JIM SHEPARD, author of The Book of Aron

“People Like You is a powerful debut by a writer of immense talent. In stories that shimmer and burn with beauty and sorrow, generosity and wit, Margaret Malone reveals the deepest, darkest, and most illuminating truths about what it means to be human. I love this book beyond measure.” —CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild

“This is the book I am personally going to put into peoples’ hands the moment it gets born. The stories in Margaret Malone’s collection People Like You will blow your mind, steal your heart, and leave your DNA rearranged. Her writing is brilliantly urgent and alive. The biggest mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of storytelling I’ve seen in years.” —LIDIA YUKNAVITCH, author of The Small Backs of Children

“Margaret Malone’s stories are fearless and true. People Like You is a sharp debut that leaves the reader eager with want for all the books that follow.”
—KYLE MINOR, author of Praying Drunk

“There are moments in Margaret Malone’s collection People Like You when it’s hard to breathe. Because People Like You are people a lot like you, disturbingly so: awkward, petty, flawed, full of hope and monotony, yearning. Malone is a master of the minimal. … Whether it’s a dying mother at a slot machine, a drinking pregnant mother stalking sex offenders, or a husband who’s having his prostate checked—every story is flawlessly told, the reader brought to the knees again and again by luxurious moments of intimacy and estrangement. … And did I mention hilarious? Don’t let these wonderful stories pass you up. Margaret Malone is a name that will soon be up there with the best and brightest.” —TOM SPANBAUER, author of I Loved You More and recipient of the Stewart Holbrook Literary Legacy Award

“Margaret Malone’s masterfully constructed stories simmer with a dry, dark humor that reveals the truth of the human soul. People Like You makes good on the promise of its title, with characters who are fully formed heads and hearts and bodies struggling with loneliness, love (or lack thereof), and who—and how—to be in the modern world.” —LIZ PRATO, author of Baby’s on Fire

“These are the best kinds of stories, little yin yangs that hold within them all that is beautiful and dull, splendid and sordid, sneaky and forthright, jaded and full of hope. Malone has tremendous powers of observation, and these detailed, plain-mouthed tales have big, beating hearts.” —ROBIN ROMM, author of The Mercy Papers and The Memory Garden

“People Like You is a stunning debut. Somehow Malone manages to be both gutsy and subtle at once — her characters are complicated, messed up in the very best way, and full of depth. Malone’s prose is a gorgeous combination of lyricism and colloquialism — a tight rope she walks with skill. People Like You is full of people like us with all of our sorrows, fears, our wit and damage, and this debut collection deserves many, many readers and high praise!” —LISA GLATT, author of The Nakeds and A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That

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To purchase a copy of PEOPLE LIKE YOU, visit your local bookseller after November 17th, or order direct from the publisher here.

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