In a new suite of powerful and incisive stories, Justin Taylor captures the lives of men and women unmoored from their pasts and uncertain of their futures.A man writes his girlfriend a Dear John letter, gets in his car, and just drives. A widowed insomniac is roused from malaise when an alligator appears in her backyard. A group of college friends tries to stay close after graduation, but are drawn away from—and back toward—each other by the choices they make. A boy's friendship with a pair of identical twins undergoes a strange and tragic evolution over the course of adolescence. A promising academic and her fiancé attempt to finish their dissertations, but struggle with writer's block, a nasty secret, and their own knowledge of Freud. From an East Village rooftop to a cabin in Tennessee, from the Florida suburbs to Hong Kong, Taylor covers a vast emotional and geographic landscape while ushering us into an abiding intimacy with his restless, unforgettable characters. Flings is a commanding work of fiction that captures the contemporary search for identity, connection, and a place to call home.
