Best Seller

Wild Failure

Name: Wild Failure
Price: 15.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Zoe Whittall
ISBN: 9780593909430

Audiobook Download

Published on Aug 20, 2024 | 4 Hours 23 Minutes

Buy from Other Retailers:

Published on Aug 20, 2024 | 4 Hours 23 Minutes

Buy from Other Retailers:

A dazzling debut collection of ten powerful, feminist, and queer short stories from bestselling author Zoe Whittall

“Absorbing and wrenchingly intimate, with a rare balance of wit and tenderness.”—Jenny Fran Davis, author of Dykette

In Wild Failure, characters encounter feelings of shame, desire, attachment, and disconnection as they find themselves navigating their way through bad decisions, unusual situations, and fraught relationships.

In “Oh, El,” a dominant woman can’t stop herself from toying with the tender heart of her co-worker. The title story, “Wild Failure,” is a doomed love story between an agoraphobic and a wilderness hiker. In “Half-Pipe,” a teen girl’s heterosexual ambivalence results in chaos at a skate park. A group of idealistic roommates find themselves the subject of a true crime podcast in “Murder at the Elm Street Collective House.” In “The Sex Castle Lunch Buffet,” a woman reflects on her brief stint at a nineties strip club after she learns of the death of a former client.

Wild Failure is replete with Whittall’s perceptive humor and acute insights into human nature. It’s also a dynamic and vibrant collection of poetic fiction that contend with the meaning of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness.

“These stories are all about women: wild women, loose women, murderous women, regretful women, and more. These stories are funny, and yet so acutely aware of things you never realized yourself. They all reflect the common theme of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness. I read this entire book in one night, and then reread it two days later when I didn’t want to leave my bed. My thoughts have been consumed ever since.”—Betches

“Phenomenal . . . Whittall compresses entire worlds into the most alive of sentences.”—Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

“These beautiful stories of longing and connection vibrate with emotional honesty and sharp detail. . . . A dirty, tender collection.”—Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)fertility

“Rigorously humane, funny, and forgiving—you know these characters well.”—Donovan Woods, musician

“How do I describe this short story collection that distracted me from my cooking and almost caused me to burn my dinner? It’s like Zoe Whittall cut these slice-of-life stories with a serrated knife whose blade is sharp enough that we see an expert storyteller in her element and dull enough that the wounds of her characters hurt so good.”—Catherine Hernandez, author of Scarborough

Author

Zoe Whittall

Zoe Whittall is the author of five novels, including the recent bestseller The Fake, which was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. The New York Times called her fourth novel, The Spectacular, a “highly readable testament to the strength of the maternal bond.” Her third novel, The Best Kind of People, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her second novel, Holding Still for as Long as Possible, won a Lambda Literary Award and was an American Library Association’s Stonewall Honor Book. Her debut novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts, won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize. She is also a Canadian Screen Award–winning TV writer. She lives in Prince Edward County.

Learn More

Wild Failure

Related Genres

You May Also Like

Stones

The Material

The Princess of 72nd Street

Looking for a Sign

Fang Fiction

One Year Ago in Spain

Banal Nightmare

Organ Meats

Rubyfruit Jungle

Salt

Success!

By Zoe Whittall