The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories

A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a pro [...]
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A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?

Aimee Bender's stories portray a world twisted on its axis, a place of unconvention that resembles nothing so much as real life, in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. From the first line of each tale she lets us know she is telling a story, but the moral is never quite what we expect. Bender's prose is glorious: musical and colloquial, inimitable and heartrending.

Here are stories of men and women whose lives are shaped--and sometimes twisted--by the power of extraordinary desires, erotic and otherwise. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is the debut of a major American writer.





"Aimee Bender's debut is a string of jewels."

--Publishers Weekly

"Superbly imagined. Bender has hit the ground running."

--Entertainment Weekly

"Bender's stories read like modern fables--with a healthy sense of twisted humor thrown in for good measure."

--The Village Voice Literary Supplement

"Aimee Bender's stories come as a revelation....She's a thrilling discovery."

--Jonathan Lethem, author of Girl in Landscape and As She Climbed Across the Table

"Keep your eye on this writer and her highwire act. I have a feeling she'll be keeping readers breathless for a long time to come."

--Dani Shapiro, author of Slow Motion