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A Guide To Being Born

Stories

Ramona Ausubel

$45

Paperback

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English
Riverhead Books
25 June 2014
In each of her eleven stories, Ramona Ausubel uses her inimitable style, her fantastical ambition, and her gift for the imaginative to expose the fundamentals of the human condition as she charts the cycle of love from conception to gestation to birth.

A pregnant teenage girl believes she will give birth to any number of strange animals rather than a human baby; an expectant father wakes to find that small drawers have appeared in the center of his chest; a girl discovers the ghost of a Civil War hero living in the woods behind her house; the parents of a severely disabled daughter must decide whether to perform a surgery that will keep her from growing; two siblings take their place in a family story that is mostly ficitonal.

As we read A Guide to Being Born, we travel through the stages of life and all the transformations that occur.

These stories are about the moments when we pass from one part of life into another, about the love that finds us in the dark and pulls us, finally, through.

'Delightful . . . startling.'

Minneapolis Star Tribune

'Galvanizing and almost uplifting . . . To call these stories ambitious is wholly accurate; Ausubel is constantly pushing for her characters to be more, to feel more, to experience more . . . A

gloriously eccentric vision.'

The Boston Globe

'Enthralling . . . What gives

A Guide to Being Born

its splendor is the way Ausubel uses her outlandish lens to magnify a very recongnizable strain of love and longing.'

San Francisco Chronicle

By:  
Imprint:   Riverhead Books
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 210mm,  Width: 140mm,  Spine: 15mm
Weight:   167g
ISBN:   9781594632686
ISBN 10:   1594632685
Pages:   208
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Ramona Ausubel is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of No One Is Here Except All of Us. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, One Story, The Paris Review Daily, Best American Fantasy, and elsewhere, and has received special mentions in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has been longlisted for The Frank O'Connor Short Story Prize, and a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions award and the Pushcart Prize.

Reviews for A Guide To Being Born: Stories

Each story in this collection finds a way to record the tensions between the corporeal and the invisible, the forces that animate us but ultimately can't be dissected, our anti-anatomies. The dismay of coming to the final page is easily combated by following the example of Ausubel's characters and beginning all over again. --The New York Times Book Review Aggressively imaginative. --The New York Times Lyrical stories arranged around themes of birth, gestation, conception and love. . . . Ausubel has a gift of language so rich that even the most mundane events are invested with poetry, and many of her characters are in need of all the poetry they can muster. --Kirkus Ausubel is a master stylist of vibrant, concise prose, and these stories, with love most often at their cores, can be appreciated for that alone. --Booklist These stories reminded me of branches full of cherry blossoms: fresh, delicate, beautiful, expressive, otherworldly. I eagerly read from one story to the next. --Aimee Bender Lyrical stories arranged around themes of birth, gestation, conception and love. . . . Ausubel has a gift of language so rich that even the most mundane events are invested with poetry, and many of her characters are in need of all the poetry they can muster. -- Kirkus Ausubel is a master stylist of vibrant, concise prose, and these stories, with love most often at their cores, can be appreciated for that alone. -- Booklist These stories reminded me of branches full of cherry blossoms: fresh, delicate, beautiful, expressive, otherworldly. I eagerly read from one story to the next. --Aimee Bender Praise for No One Is Here Except All of Us Fantastical and ambitious . . . infused with faith in the power of storytelling. -- The New York Times Book Review An absorbing and unpredictable novel. . . . Ausubel's original voice combines fresh, clear observation and Old testament grandeur. -- The New Yorker No One Is Here Except All of Us contains so many achingly beautiful passages, it's as if language itself is continually striving to be a refuge. . . . If a book can be said to have a consciousness, the consciousness here is infinitely tender and soulful, magical and true. -- San Francisco Chronicle Praise for No One Is Here Except All of Us Fantastical and ambitious . . . infused with faith in the power of storytelling. -- The New York Times Book Review An absorbing and unpredictable novel. . . . Ausubel's original voice combines fresh, clear observation and Old testament grandeur. -- The New Yorker No One Is Here Except All of Us contains so many achingly beautiful passages, it's as if language itself is continually striving to be a refuge. . . . If a book can be said to have a consciousness, the consciousness here is infinitely tender and soulful, magical and true. -- San Francisco Chronicle


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