Man V. Nature: Stories - Tapa dura

"Diane Cook's writing is sharp, bawdy, bold and often hilarious. Her stories are refreshingly crude and her imagination is unbounded. Like her characters, Cook does what she wants. Her world is another universe, where people are wilder."--Rebecca Curtis, author of TWENTY GRAND: AND OTHER TALES OF LOVE AND MONEY

"What I like most about these stories is that many of them are dispatches from the end of the world, and it turns out to be a surprisingly familiar place."--Ira Glass, Host, "This American Life"

"Masterful...Each darkly comic modern fable reveals our societal preoccupations -- with status, sex, motherhood, belonging -- for what they really are: thin veneers over our ever-present animal selves, ready to crack at the merest provocation. A book that'll grab your attention and keep you thinking."--Helene Wecker, author of THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI

"Diane Cook's stories are like high-wattage bulbs strung across a sinister, dark land. Man V. Nature is equal parts dazzle and depth."--Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born

"Man V. Nature could also be called Diane Cook V. The Challenges of Writing Fresh, Invigorating Fiction in Our Age. In the latter contest, Cook crushes. Here is a bold debut."--Sam Lipsyte, author of HOME LAND

"MAN V. NATURE is as close to experiencing a Picasso as literature can get: the worlds in Diane Cook's impressive debut are bizarre, vertiginous, funny, pushed to the extreme-but just familiar enough in their nuances of the human condition to evoke an irresistible, around-the-corner reality."--Tea Obreht, author of THE TIGER'S WIFE

"Quirkiness abounds, with several fairy-tale tropes thrown in for good measure...Some stories jump off the page...all are oddly charming."--Publishers Weekly

"Potent and unnerving...stark spookiness in the vein of Shirley Jackson and William Golding...[and] a lonely weirdness like that of Aimee Bender and George Saunders...Cook writes assuredly of archetypal terror and even more insightfully of hunger-for food, friendship, love, and above all, survival. A canny, refined, and reverberating debut."--Donna Seaman, Booklist

"[Cook] puts forth idiosyncratic and twisted conceits, but delivers the narrative goods when it comes to depicting the tragic, emotional lives of her characters... Like the best kind of fiction, the reader is left with much to think about within the broad realms of sex, death, love and friendship."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Here's a good rule: If Diane Cook wrote it, read it...Safety is tenuous, if not an illusion, in her thoughtful, unsettling, and darkly funny collection."--Boston Globe