"Spectacular. Creator of BoJack Horseman Bob-Waksberg debuts with a delightfully strange and darkly funny collection. Reading these 'love stories' about drunk superheroes, sacrificial weddings, inverted universes, and theme parks of dead presidents, a lump caught in my throat, a smile crept across my face, and I gasped, 'I know exactly what that feels like.'"
Publisher Knopf
Publication Date 2019-06-11
Section New Hardcover - Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Kate B.
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781524732011
Written with all the scathing dark humor that is a hallmark of BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg's stories will make readers laugh, weep, and shiver in uncomfortably delicious recognition. In "A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion," a young couple planning a wedding is forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices. "Missed Connection—m4w" is the tragicomic tale of a pair of lonely commuters eternally failing to make that longed-for contact. The members of a rock band in "Up-and-Comers" discover they suddenly have superpowers—but only when they're drunk. And in "The Serial Monogamist's Guide to Important New York City Landmarks," a woman maps her history of romantic failures based on the places she and her significant others visited together.
Equally at home with the surreal and the painfully relatable (or both at once), Bob-Waksberg delivers a killer combination of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability. The resulting collection is a punchy, perfect bloody valentine.
“Raphael is my favorite kind of person and his writing is my favorite kind of writing: constantly alternating between the funniest and the most profound things I've ever read. He is a canceler-out of boredom.” —Lisa Hanawalt, author of Coyote Doggirl
“Here’s love in all of its terrible, ridiculous, humiliating glory. Have any friends that you wish would break up with their partners? Give them this book. Have a friend whose love life is not going well? Give them this book. Feeling envious of some friend because their love life is Instagram perfect? Give them this book. And you might as well pick up a copy for yourself as well. You probably need it.” —Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble
“Stories that make the familiar strange and the strange familiar and all of it hilarious. This book made me laugh while squeezing my heart—not hard enough to kill me, just hard enough so that I remembered what heartbreak feels like. Dark, funny, and brilliant.” —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
