Scott Bradfield’s thirteen stories inhabit a Southern California of office parks, cheap apartments, supermarkets and domestic attrition.

A dissatisfied husband dreams himself into successive species of wolf; lonely workers, failed children and exhausted families retreat into fantasies, they subscribe to Bradfield’s method of placing the primal and grotesque beside the aggressively mundane—bourbon, canned food, brand names, dead-end jobs—until suburban life seems to be the most weird thing of it all.

First published in 1990, the collection followed Bradfield’s cult novel The History of Luminous Motion and received sharply divided reviews: some critics found it startlingly exact and darkly funny, while others disliked its repetition and emotional distance. That split makes sense. Bradfield’s stories are deliberately abrasive, full of damaged loners whose inner worlds do not redeem them so much as swallow them. Best for readers drawn to off-centre American fiction, domestic surrealism and the point where psychological realism develops teeth. 

First Vintage Contemporaries edition, February 1992 paperback. Good condition with light cover rubbing, mild edge and corner wear, and a small crease to the lower front corner.