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I know you know who I am : stories / Peter Kispert.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Penguin Books, [2020]Description: 226 pages ; 20 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780143134282
  • 0143134280
Uniform titles:
  • Short stories. Selections
Contained works:
  • Kispert, Peter. Puncture
  • Kispert, Peter. River is to ocean as--is to heart
  • Kispert, Peter. Human resources
  • Kispert, Peter. Aim for the heart
  • Kispert, Peter. Audition
  • Kispert, Peter. How to live your best life
  • Kispert, Peter. Please hold
  • Kispert, Peter. Be alive
  • Kispert, Peter. Breathing underwater
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Part I: I KNOW. I know you know who I am ; Puncture ; River is to ocean as __ is to heart ; Human resources ; Aim for the heart ; Audition ; How to live your best life -- Part II: YOU KNOW. Please hold ; Be alive ; Breathing underwater ; Signs ; Rorschach ; Goldfish bowl ; Diving, drifting -- Part III: WHO I AM. Master's thesis ; Touch pool ; Clearwater ; Tourniquet ; In the palm of his hand ; Double edge ; Mooring.
Summary: "In the linked and tightly thematic stories of I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM, Kispert explores deception, performance, and the uneasiness of reconciling a queer identity with the wider world, with characters who try to navigate that dissonance by acting like another person for someone else. Throughout the collection we meet gay characters who have created sometimes elaborate falsehoods and who now must cope with the way that those deceptions eat at the very fabric of their lives and relationships. In the title story, the protagonist, desperate to save a love affair on the rocks, hires an actor to play an invented friend during an arranged meeting with his boyfriend; in "Aim for the Heart", the main character's lies about a hunting habit have left him with an unexpected deer carcass and the need to parse unsettling high school memories; in "Mooring", a trip back to the protagonist's unexpectedly dilapidated childhood home reveals the ways that he has warped the truth in his current relationship when describing his feelings about his father. Throughout the book, moments of deception collide with moments of high-stakes and at times hyper-real performance, creating a stunning portrait of queer characters searching for paths to intimacy and attempting to deal with their own vulnerability. I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM is a densely woven collection about emotional damage in the tradition of Mary Gaitskill's BAD BEHAVIOR". -- Provided by publisher.Summary: In a series of linked stories, Kispert explores deception, performance, and the uneasiness of reconciling a queer identity with the wider world. His characters try to navigate that dissonance by acting like another person for someone else. Throughout the collection we meet gay characters who have created sometimes elaborate falsehoods and who now must cope with the way that those deceptions eat at the very fabric of their lives and relationships. They are characters searching for paths to intimacy and attempting to deal with their own vulnerability. adapted from publisher info
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Fiction Kispert, Peter Available 33111009595238
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

AN ELLE MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
AN O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE MUST-READ LGBTQ BOOK OF THE YEAR
AN ELECTRIC LIT BEST SHORT STORY COLLECTION OF THE YEAR
A GRINDR QUEER BOOK OF THE YEAR
A THE ADVOCATE LGBT+ Book You Absolutely Need to Read

"Riveting... Every lie reveals itself so exquisitely that the parallels become an added pleasure, as soon as we uncover the ways they diverge." -- New York Times Book Review

"Dazzling. Here is a confident, psychologically astute new writer with a bold new vision." --Garrard Conley, New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased

Throughout this striking debut collection we meet characters who have lied, who have sometimes created elaborate falsehoods, and who now must cope with the way that those deceptions eat at the very fabric of their lives and relationships. In the title story, the narrator, desperate to save a love affair on the rocks, hires an actor to play a friend he invented in order to seem less lonely, after his boyfriend catches on to his compulsion for lying and demands to know this friend is real; in "Aim for the Heart," a man's lies about a hunting habit leave him with an unexpected deer carcass and the need to parse unsettling high school memories; in "Rorschach," a theater producer runs a show in which death row inmates are crucified in an on-stage rendering of the New Testament, while being haunted daily by an unrequited love and nightly by ghosts of his own creation.

In I Know You Know Who I Am , Kispert deftly explores deception and performance, the uneasiness of reconciling a queer identity with the wider world, and creates a sympathetic, often darkly humorous, portrait of characters searching for paths to intimacy.

"In the linked and tightly thematic stories of I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM, Kispert explores deception, performance, and the uneasiness of reconciling a queer identity with the wider world, with characters who try to navigate that dissonance by acting like another person for someone else. Throughout the collection we meet gay characters who have created sometimes elaborate falsehoods and who now must cope with the way that those deceptions eat at the very fabric of their lives and relationships. In the title story, the protagonist, desperate to save a love affair on the rocks, hires an actor to play an invented friend during an arranged meeting with his boyfriend; in "Aim for the Heart", the main character's lies about a hunting habit have left him with an unexpected deer carcass and the need to parse unsettling high school memories; in "Mooring", a trip back to the protagonist's unexpectedly dilapidated childhood home reveals the ways that he has warped the truth in his current relationship when describing his feelings about his father. Throughout the book, moments of deception collide with moments of high-stakes and at times hyper-real performance, creating a stunning portrait of queer characters searching for paths to intimacy and attempting to deal with their own vulnerability. I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM is a densely woven collection about emotional damage in the tradition of Mary Gaitskill's BAD BEHAVIOR". -- Provided by publisher.

Part I: I KNOW. I know you know who I am ; Puncture ; River is to ocean as __ is to heart ; Human resources ; Aim for the heart ; Audition ; How to live your best life -- Part II: YOU KNOW. Please hold ; Be alive ; Breathing underwater ; Signs ; Rorschach ; Goldfish bowl ; Diving, drifting -- Part III: WHO I AM. Master's thesis ; Touch pool ; Clearwater ; Tourniquet ; In the palm of his hand ; Double edge ; Mooring.

In a series of linked stories, Kispert explores deception, performance, and the uneasiness of reconciling a queer identity with the wider world. His characters try to navigate that dissonance by acting like another person for someone else. Throughout the collection we meet gay characters who have created sometimes elaborate falsehoods and who now must cope with the way that those deceptions eat at the very fabric of their lives and relationships. They are characters searching for paths to intimacy and attempting to deal with their own vulnerability. adapted from publisher info

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