Book cover of The Paris Review Book of People with Problems

Book description

The Paris Review asks: who hasn't survived a tax audit, a snowstorm, a break-up, or presided over a murder?

The next addictively clever Paris Review anthology is not a self-help manual; rather it is a wicked elaboration on the human effort to overcome--and instigate--trouble. Throughout these pages you will find…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Paris Review Book of People with Problems as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The title is a serious understatement, as it is a collection of very compelling short stories about people whose problems have caused their lives to become catastrophic disasters. We meet people in these stories who have made some colossally bad decisions which have created cascading pain for themselves and everyone around them.

The authors somehow make these characters all too human, and any reader will see echoes of a particularly bad period of their own life where a challenging situation went from bad to worse. I guess it is not surprising that almost all of these sadly recognizable characters are…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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