Aryn Kyle was born in Peoria, Illinois, and grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado. Her debut novel, The God of Animals was an international bestseller and the winner of an American Library Association’s Alex Award, a PNBA Award, an MPIBA Award, and others. The God of Animals was chosen as a Book Sense Pick, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers title, and was named by Amazon as the Number One Fiction Debut of 2007. Aryn’s short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories 2007, Best New American Voices 2005, and elsewhere. Aryn is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and a National Magazine Award in fiction. She lives in New York City.
Aryn Kyle, whose first novel was hailed as “reason for readers to rejoice,” turns her gift for storytelling to the lives of girls and women in this spectacular collection.
In “Nine,” a young girl given to exaggeration escapes a humiliating ninth birthday celebration with the help of her father’s new girlfriend. The dubious benefits of sleeping with one’s boss are revealed when a bookstore manager defends an employee from an irate customer in the hilarious “Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore.” A raid on a neighbor’s meth lab strengthens the unlikely friendship between a solitary woman and the goth teenage girl who lives in the apartment below her in “Boys and Girls Like You and Me.” And in a notable exception to the rule, “Captain’s Club” features a boy whose devotion to a lonely woman transforms his cruise vacation.
In moments electric with sudden harmony or ruthless indifference, the girls and women in this collection provoke, beguile, entertain, and reveal a poignant and searingly accurate portrait of the female heart. With her keen eye for character, her humor, and her uncanny grasp of the loneliness, selfishness, and longing that permeate the female experience, Kyle has secured her reputation as a major young talent.
