WIN $150 GIFT VOUCHERS: ALADDIN'S GOLD
Robin McLean: Robin McLean was a lawyer and then a potter for 15 years in the woods of Alaska before receiving her MFA at UMass Amherst in Massachusetts. Her first collection Reptile House was a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Story Prize in 2011 and 2012. McLean's stories appear widely in such places as The Nashville Review, The Malahat Review, Gargoyle, and The Common and Copper Nickel, as well as the anthology American Fiction: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers. A figure skater first-having learned to skate and walk at the same time-McLean believes that crashing on ice prepared her for writing fiction. She currently teaches at Clark University, and splits her time between Newfound Lake in Bristol, New Hampshire, and a 200-year-old farm in western Massachusetts.
Robin McLean's debut collection is electric. I recommend that you get a copy and put it at the top of your stack. --Jodi Angel, author of You Only Get Letters From Jail Reptile House is so wonderful. It's full of (almost) unbearable tension and what a wild ride through so many worlds. I enjoyed reading it hugely and am recommending it to all my reading/writing friends. --Kathy Anderson, author of Next Door Gay-bors and Front Row Seat When you read Robin McLean's stories, she's gonna get you. She will take you out into deep, and then deeper, water. --Noy Holland, author of Spectacle of the Body, Swim for the Little on First, and Bird: A Novel Robin McLean writes in wonderful cascades of language. Her characters are carried along by those cascades, often unwittingly. Sometimes, as with the two young men in 'No Name Creek,' they are carried to a happy end. More often, they seem to be, like Lilibeth in 'Cold Snap,' overtaken by events beyond their control. Characters' own words, often inept or pathetic in light of their situations, offer ironic counterpoint. Much is laughable in these stories. Don't be deceived. Through her sly wit and humor, Robin McLean is luring readers into deeper questions. --Frank Soos Tonally and structurally, these marvelous stories have no discernable influences. In her debut collection, Robin McLean emerges as a writer with a singular voice and vision. I admire this book immoderately, and I hope that readers will find it. --Chris Bachelder Robin McLean's fiction is harrowing and wry and compassionate, and always both fiercely rooted in the world and fearlessly willing to take chances. I love her keen sense of our inherent strangeness, and her heartening sense of just how important it is that we never stop trying to close the gap between who are and who we aspire to be. --Jim Shepard McLean's debut collection of short stories moves seamlessly from adultery to kidnapping, from assassination plots to extreme geothermal events, all in a voice that is spare and darkly poetic... McLean's characters are lonely in their marriages, isolated from the world around them, and not generally given happy endings. What this book does offer, however, is strangely realistic glimpses into conflicts that are equal parts surreal and hyper-realistic, rendered by a voice that gracefully juxtaposes terse reportage and lyrical insight. The result is a taut volume that explores the fate of the dashed dreamer, offering charming insights into the untidy worlds of people who are not where they thought they'd be. --Publishers Weekly
