Why Trees

“Hannah Gold is giving the NYC creative class a treatment both brutal and tender in her genre-bending, almost irritatingly funny first story collection. If Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection had a baby with Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior, you could begin to scratch at the absurd poetry of these tales . . . I predict that creative writing students nationwide will pore over these stories, recognize themselves a little too closely—perhaps needing to hide from them even as they can’t stop talking about them—and then teach them in seminars thirty years later.” —Lena Dunham, author of Famesick and creator of Girls

“The gigawattage of Hannah Gold’s wit and intelligence could light up Manhattan—and in Why Trees they literally do. These stories are as ruinously sleek and extravagant as stolen credit cards, a thrilling correction to the millennial miserabilism of yesterday. Read this book or I’ll kill you!”—Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection

“Among my favorite short stories of the past decade have been Hannah Gold’s whip-smart, unpredictable, absurdly entertaining tales of contemporary life, filled with formal invention and human knowing. How lucky we are to have them assembled here, like a tray of delectable desserts, for our collective delight.”—Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies

“A buoyant, sharp, hilarious, and sometimes brutal account of life in pursuit of things that are forever. I absolutely loved these stories.”—Celine Song, director of Past Lives and The Materialists

“Gold can be funny, brilliant, and devastating, sometimes in the space of one sentence. She’’s like a New York club comic on the page, a gymnast of the life of the mind. This debut displays a new voice you’’ll want hear all the time.”—Vinson Cunningham, author of Great Expectations

“Thoreau wrote that most people ‘live lives of quiet desperation.’ Gold’s irresistible stories seem to answer: Yes—but isn’t that funny? Clever without being cruel, they capture a city of fading, but somehow never extinguished hopes.”—John Ganz, author of When the Clock Broke

“Hannah Gold’s brilliant stories skitter and swerve and endlessly surprise. These are stories about living through the end of things—journalism, friendship, basic human decency—and finding a way to stagger forward, scathing wit intact. With books like this, there’s still some hope for us yet.”—Andrew Martin, author of Down Time

“Gold’s stories have clever premises, fine sentences, and interesting, sometimes endearing characters drawn from New York’s creative class. . . . Throughout the book, there are many sentences that are little marvels of comic writing in themselves. . . . A vivacious display of writing talent and comic pizazz.”—Kirkus Reviews