Bark

Praise

A Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize Finalist

“Uncanny. . . . Moving. . . . A powerful collection.” —The Washington Post

“Moore’s one of the country’s most admired writers. . . . [Bark] shows off a true advance of Moore’s powers and offers some first-rate reading pleasure.” —NPR

“[Bark is] a book to which people will refer back to understand life as we lived it in the past ten years.” —Salon

“Her stories, her stories, are perfect.” —Slate

“Here is why one reads Moore: the terse, true polish of her emotional wisdom.” —The Boston Globe

“Probably no writer since Nabokov has been as language-obsessed as Moore. . . . [Bark] lets us contemplate and savor just what makes her work unique.” —The New York Times Book Review (cover)

“Irresistible.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“100% brilliant, as usual. . . . Moore has come to enjoy the unusual distinction of being just about the darkest light writer around. Unhappiness, heartbreak, illness, grief, disappointment—who’d have thought they could be so much fun?” —Geoff Dyer, The Observer (London)

“Extraordinary. . . . Moore’s construction of a sentence, a paragraph, a page, is rarely less than exhilarating. . . . There is a moral nobility to Moore’s assertion that even the least brilliant of lives deserve to be brilliantly documented. . . . Moore does not make us feel better; she hurts us. But she hurts us in vital, generous ways, and it is testament to the brilliance of her writing that we let her.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

“If you adore Lorrie Moore, as so many of us do, you’ll find much to enjoy in her new collection. . . . All the sparkly balls are in play—puns, politics, pop culture details, sometimes all at once.” —Newsday

“If you had to criticize one thing about Lorrie Moore—and I don’t know why you would, because she’s awesome—it might be that her humor and her world-weary sense of the absurd are almost too distinctive. . . . But I don’t have the heart to really complain about any of this: I’ve been addicted to Moore’s voice for a long time now and want more, not less, of it.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Laugh-out-loud funny. . . . Reading the stories one after another is a reminder of her uncanny ability to sum up, in a sentence or two, the truths that might take a lifetime to grasp.” —Houston Chronicle

“Lorrie Moore’s writing is strange and wonderful. It should be among anyone’s top reasons for being alive.” —PopMatters

“A vital work of literature.” —Electric Literature