March 2013 First Editions Club Pick

New York, NY: Grove (2013)

First Edition. Signed.

Fine in dust jacket.

Sharp-edged and fearless, mixing white-hot yearning with daring humor, Jamie Quatro's debut collection is a beautiful and disquieting portrait of infidelity, faith, and family. The hypnotically intimate, urgent stories in "I Want to Show You More" are about lives stretched between spirituality and sexuality in the New American South. In narrative modes ranging from the traditional to the fabulist, these stories are interconnected explorations of God, illicit sex, raising children--and running. Jamie Quatro's stories confront us with dark theological complexities, fractured marriages, and mercurial temptations: a wife comes home with her husband to find her lover's corpse in their bed; a teenager attends a Bible Camp where he seduces a young cancer survivor with hopes of curing his own rare condition; marathon runners on a Civil War battlefield must carry phallic statues and are punished if they choose to unload their burdens; a girl's embarrassment over attending a pool party with her quadriplegic mother turns to fierce devotion under the pitying gaze of other guests; and a husband asks his wife to show him how she would make love to another man. "I Want to Show You More" unleashes Quatro's exhilarating talent for exposing the quiet terrors of modern life with stunning and subversive energy.