How to Court Disaster takes us from wide expanses of open ocean to the enclosed spaces of grimy dive bars, echoing caves, and the holds of a musty ship. A grieving mother explores the secret chambers of a cave system. A stranded sailor joins the crew of a movie being filmed on a remote tropical island. A pregnant teenager finds herself on foot in the middle of a whiteout snowstorm with a stranger鈥檚 baby in her arms. A bed-and-breakfast owner struggles to rekindle her bond with the husband who no longer fully remembers their life together. Moving headlong into trouble, the characters in these stories discover they possess the inner resources they need to carry them beyond it: pluck, grit, fierceness, hope, and a growing sense of who they are becoming.
鈥How to Court Disaster is a brilliant and audacious collection of stories that careens from an ice fishing cabin to a subterranean river, from a shipwreck on a surreal island to a Filipino nightclub during the Vietnam War. At each stop, Kate Blakinger鈥檚 sharp, agile prose illuminates powerful insights for her characters as they navigate a broken world where 鈥榮omething horrible is always happening somewhere.鈥欌濃擩ess Walter, judge, 海角乱伦社区Short Fiction Award
鈥How to Court Disaster is a book of love stories鈥攂reathtaking, eye-opening, hair-raising love stories鈥攏ot love as we usually encounter it in stories, but love among the ruins, love for the wounded and the wounding, love defined with searing wisdom as 鈥榝eeling safe even when you're not.鈥 Love in real life, if you will. It鈥檚 one of the finest collections I鈥檝e read this year and if you鈥檙e looking for grown-up love stories鈥攚orld weary, gimlet eyed, bracingly frank and yet taut with passion鈥攖his book is for you.鈥濃擯eter Ho Davies, author, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself
鈥淚njury and endurance haunt Blakinger鈥檚 enthralling and calamitous stories. This is a superb collection, rife with moral ambiguities and the potential for chaos.鈥濃擡lizabeth McKenzie, author, The Dog of the North
鈥淎 live current of violence and physical exigency runs through these stories, whose tensile, sinuous sentences delight. Exquisitely sensitive to language and place and attuned to the world鈥檚 dangers, Blakinger writes in the tradition of Christine Schutt, Kathryn Scanlan, and Denis Johnson. She is a major new talent.鈥濃擟ara Blue Adams, author, You Never Get It Back, a New York Times Editors鈥 Choice
鈥How to Court Disaster is a beautiful collection of extreme, awe-颅inspiring environments where characters fearlessly hurtle past what they know and move toward lives about to be transformed. I loved reading this book.鈥濃擬arian Crotty, author, Near Strangers
