Cover of The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories

The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories

Fans of the work of Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut, George Saunders, and T. Coraghessan Boyle will revel in Alasdair Gray's masterful, witty collection. Gray's stories defy genre, and his angular, playful style, prodigious wit, and razor-sharp intellect are matched by his remarkable skill with the short-story form. In "Job's Skin Game," the narrator humbly tells his life story like the evenings news. During a moment of awkward revelation, he shares the strangely exquisite pleasure he receives from scratching at the skin condition he's developed since losing his two sons in the Twin Towers tragedy and a small fortune in the dot-com meltdown. In "Big Pockets with Button Flaps," a wily old man teases and taunts a pair of punk teenage girls as their confrontation takes on social implication through lightning-fast transfers of power and wit. The Ends of Our Tethers is vintage Gray—accessible, experimental, mischievous, wide ranging, beautifully written, and wise.

Audience
adult
Length
short · 192 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. If it is Your Life Shares short stories, scottish, Scotland
  2. Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains Shares short stories, scottish, Scotland
  3. A Calendar of Love and Other Stories Shares short stories, scottish, Scotland
  4. Uncle Remus Shares fiction

“People who read The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Julia and the Bazooka and Other Stories
  2. Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic
  3. Nine Hundred Grandmothers
  4. The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman: Including The Brother

“If you want more of the same (humor), start with these.”

  1. Hieroglyphics and Other Stories
  2. Bucket of Tongues
  3. Busted Scotch
  4. Blood

“If it was the short stories that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Now That You're Back
  2. What Becomes
  3. The Complete Short Stories
  4. Jellyfish

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Etiquette and Vitriol: The Food Chain and Other Plays
  2. Prize Stories 2001: The O. Henry Awards
  3. Doubletakes: Pairs of Contemporary Short Stories
  4. Silent Blade