Things We’ll Need for the Coming Difficulties – by Valerie Vogrin
by Valerie Vogrin. This Stylistically creative collection of stories explores what it might be like to be a Galapagos Tortoise’s girlfriend, survive a global cataclysm, flip a coin to decide your fate, and allow yourself to disappear down a highway with no destination in mind. Each story hums with an undercurrent of dread and dark humor and invites the reader to consider how it might feel to have control at the tips of your fingers but never quite within reach.
Things We’ll Need for the Coming Difficulties is one of the best short story collections I’ve read in years. there’s so much humor, sympathy, and flat-out honesty directed toward these characters… that you’ll swear you know these folks. To experience such kinship through prose that wouldn’t tolerate a flabby sentence or admit a lazy line of dialogue, is nothing less than sheer joy. -Anthony Varallo, author of The Lines
Valerie Vogrin’s first full-length story collection is populated with characters who are lost, characters who are wounded, characters rendered with precision and the unflinching eye of an exert storyteller at the top of her craft… [L]ike us, they are deeply human and, in that way, utterly recognizable… Vogrin’s prose is clear and confident and often grimly humorous, but in the end, she is an artist of the unstated, deftly seeding clues that blossom into stories rich in detail and imagination. -Dorene O’Brien, award-winning author of What It Might Feel Like to Hope
…original, wickedly funny, satirical at times and heart-bruising. -Karen Karbo, author of The Diamond Lane
Things We’ll Need for the Coming Difficulties can be purchased here.