The best stories here, such as 'Pineola Inn' and 'American Widow', are undermined by other short, weak pieces which are more like sketches or undeveloped vignettes.

Twelve strong stories is a better collection that a mixed bag of 18 pieces. I always think less is more, when it comes to collections.

Maybe if I had read this volume after reading a couple of crappy books I would have liked it more. 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.This book had the misfortune to be read following a brilliant novel and a stellar short fiction collection. Kevin Killian, author of Impossible Princess Few books in recent times have intrigued and enchanted me as has Philip Huang s collection A Pornography of Grief. His stories will shock some and appall others, but no one will deny that he s a master storyteller. For everything he touches, no matter how banal, turns to gold in his energizing and alchemical hands. Into the junk, the commercialized pap of American culture, Philip Huang walks blithely and steadily as though he were entering the Elysian Fields. Here is a promising new voice, one that scours the cesspool of our complicated and confusing human evolution. Philip Huang s prose is precise, pristine, and poised to defy expectations. This provocative debut collection rips at your insides, forces remembrance of the hidden sorrows of dreams. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.Ī Pornography of Grief invites your gaze at private, unspeakable pain, while asking you to harbor lust in your heart. This is the beauty, this is the pathology, this is the pornography of grief. These are the stories of the ones who have survived.

These are the stories of the walking wounded. Like a good sad album, this book opens up wounds, probes the sorrows and strange lives of its characters, and finds transcendence in unexpected places. One finds profound sympathy, a black sense of humor, and an icy sort of justice in these stories. The past and the present blur together in ways that only people living at the periphery of reason understand. The author of a self-help book comes to terms with how little help she has ever really had. A bride who has survived her own decapitation keeps losing her head at her own wedding. A woman lives with a band of fellow survivors in a ratty hotel, all keeping intoxicated watch over comatose loved ones. Huang understands how powerfully we are drawn to these things, even as we publicly turn away from them and confine them to the safe spaces behind closed doors. In this affecting, harrowing, and darkly hilarious debut collection, Philip Huang explores the topics that compel us and terrify us: sex, grief, and death.

A Pornography of Grief by Philip Huang