The arresting and brilliantly original collection of short stories from the prize-winning and bestselling author of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore.
"An absolute pleasure" New York Times
From a man's illicit tryst cut short by his estranged son's homecoming, a prostitute dominatrix about to be caught with a dead US congressman, to a performance artist whose grotesque weight-gain becomes an art-world phenomenon, Hale's deliberate prose, dark humour, and unforgettable characters explore the secrets beneath the surface of contemporary American lives.
In The Fat Artist and Other Stories, Hale openly embraces the grotesque side of human nature and the unnerving intersection between life and death, art and ridicule, consumption and creation.
MORE PRAISE FOR THE FAT ARTIST AND OTHER STORIES
"Benjamin Hale writes from an altitude that is entirely his own. ... The Fat Artist is a brilliant, ceaselessly engaging book." Joseph O'Neill
"Hale's well-hewn, often violent tales are saturated with sadness and full of strange, marginal folk, but the thoughts, desires, and failures of these oddball characters are acutely recognizable . . . This book is at once absurd, morbid, melancholy, ridiculous, and disturbing." Publisher's Weekly
"[An] excellent new story collection . . . like the flare of a satellite that will one day decay and crash back down to Earth, it's oddly beautiful and impossible to look away from." Los Angeles Times