An Amateur's Guide to the Night — Mary Robison

"Mary Robison's short stories are short, subtle, and substantial . . . Her ironic sense of detail bursts from every sentence." -- Vogue

An Amateur's Guide to the Night stands as a perfect example of Mary Robison's beloved narrative style: purposeful, clipped, and devastating in its restraint. Reflecting on the life of disaffected youth, these stories speculate on how they often manage to remain deferent towards the rest of society -- and document how spectacularly they often fail.

"These thirteen stories are glimpses from a moving train into lit parlors, dinettes, bedrooms and dens . . . Think of Robison as the engineer, blowing the whistle, calling the stops and starts; invisible when you want to ask her why we're stalled here in the middle of nowhere, between stations, jobs, relationships and decisions." -- Los Angeles Times