Squandering the Blue

An uncompromising and sensually charged collection from one of the great practitioners of the short story

The debut story collection from Los Angeles writer Kate Braverman assembles a vivid patchwork of interconnected narratives set in Southern California. Through brief, often haunting snapshots of women’s lives, Braverman presents portraits of individuals and communities entangled in cycles of longing and substance dependency—with affection and addiction often being destructively braided together.

“Falling in October” is a spoof of the art communities as well as a feminist post-nuclear story; in “Points of Decision,” a troubled woman tries to free herself of an abusive relationship; and in the highly anthologized “Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta,” a recovering alcoholic navigates the challenges of motherhood and new sobriety while developing a risky relationship with an enigmatic stranger.

Squandering the Blue sees Braverman explore an underlying concern with articulation—how individuals interpret, label, or suppress experience while caught in the shadow of the potential for a better life.

“If, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it stands to reason that horror, too, lurks deep within the optic nerve. How else to explain the lushly menacing imagery in the poet and novelist Kate Braverman’s latest book?” —The New York Times