Stay Up With Me

Name: Stay Up With Me
Author: Tom Barbash
ISBN: 9780062258120

by Tom Barbash

The stories in Tom Barbash's wondrous and evocative collection explore the myriad ways we try to connect with one another and with the sometimes cruel world around us. The newly single mother in "The Break" interferes in her son's love life over his Christmas vacation from college. The anxious young man in "Balloon Night" persists in hosting his and his wife's annual watch-the-Macy's-Thanksgiving-Day-Parade-floats-be-inflated party while trying to keep the myth of his marriage equally afloat. "Somebody's Son" tells the story of a young man guiltily conning an elderly couple out of their home in the Adirondacks, and the narrator in "The Women" watches his widowed father become the toast of Manhattan's midlife dating scene, as he struggles to find his own footing in life.…

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NPR Books We Love

"Tom Barbash is a master of the intriguing first sentence: “My son, Rajiv, is sleeping with a student from my Dante class.” “Kistler’s second winter in upstate New York was a season of fires, snowstorms, and deaths.” He writes of a newly single mom who invades her son’s love life during his college break, and of a man just deserted by his wife who hosts their annual party to watch “cloud-sized cartoon characters” being inflated for the Thanksgiving parade. “To Amy!” he calls out drunkenly, realizing he is at the start of the “darkest part of his life.” Barbash’s miniature dramas sparkle with grace and wit."

NPR Books We Love — 2013 · apps.npr.org

Dave Eggers

"I’m reading a short story collection by Tom Barbash called “Stay Up With Me.” It’s not out yet, and probably won’t be for a year or so, but it’s so good."

By the Book: Dave Eggers · nytimes.com