Praying Drunk: Stories, Questions (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781936747634)

"I finished this book with my heart pounding and grateful, my coffee cold and my smile wide and crying like a baby."--Daniel Handler

The characters in Praying Drunk speak in tongues, torture their classmates, fall in love, hunt for immortality, abandon their children, keep machetes beneath passenger seats, and collect porcelain figurines. A man crushes pills on the bathroom counter while his son watches from the hallway; missionaries clumsily navigate an uprising with barbed wire and broken glass; a boy disparages memorized scripture, facedown on the asphalt, as he fails to fend off his bully. From Kentucky to Florida to Haiti, these seemingly disparate lives are woven together within a series of nested repetitions, enacting the struggle to remain physically and spiritually alive throughout the untamable turbulence of their worlds. In a masterful blend of fiction, autobiography, and surrealism, Kyle Minor shows us that the space between fearlessness and terror is often very small. Long before Praying Drunk reaches its plaintive, pitch-perfect end, Minor establishes himself again and again as one of the most talented younger writers in America.


Author: Kyle Minor
ISBN-10: 1936747634
ISBN-13: 9781936747634
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Language: English
Published: 02/04/2014
Pages: 192
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.40w x 0.60d
Award: Independent Publisher Book Awards - Bronze Medal Winner

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/08/2013
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2014
New York Times Book Review 04/27/2014 pg. 24