Trade Paperback
192 Pages, 5.2 x 8 x 0.47 in
August 17, 1999
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
0385492162
9780385492164
From Our Editors
Young American Aimee Bender is a writer to watch
with her stories appearing in Granta, The Antioch
Review and GQ. Her first collection of short stories,
the delightfully named The Girl in the Flammable
Skirt, has been critically acclaimed for its wit and
imagination. Populated with whimsical characters who see the world
askew, these stories offer real life as seen through a
kaleidoscopically inventive imagination, offering a fresh and
humorous look at the short-story genre.
From the Publisher
A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who
enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress
follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only
wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback;
when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A
wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with
the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no
lips?
Aimee Bender''s stories portray a world twisted on its axis, a
place of unconvention that resembles nothing so much as real life,
in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. From the first line of each
tale she lets us know she is telling a story, but the moral is
never quite what we expect. Bender''s prose is glorious: musical
and colloquial, inimitable and heartrending.
Here are stories of men and women whose lives are shaped--and
sometimes twisted--by the power of extraordinary desires, erotic
and otherwise. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is the
debut of a major American writer.
From the Jacket
A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who
enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress
follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only
wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback;
when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A
wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with
the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no
lips?
Aimee Bender''s stories portray a world twisted on its axis, a
place of unconvention that resembles nothing so much as real life,
in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. From the first line of each
tale she lets us know she is telling a story, but the moral is
never quite what we expect. Bender''s prose is glorious: musical
and colloquial, inimitable and heartrending.
Here are stories of men and women whose lives are shaped--and
sometimes twisted--by the power of extraordinary desires, erotic
and otherwise. "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is the debut of a
major American writer.
About the Author
Aimee Bender lives in Los Angeles. Her stories have appeared in
Granta, GQ, Story, The Antioch Review, and several other
publications. She received her MFA in creative writing from the
University of California, Irvine, and she is currently at work on
her first novel.