Mary Clyde

Survival Rates

Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. "Finely crafted short fiction that explores the aftermath of life-threatening events. . . . Sculpted prose." —Booklist

Mary Clyde’s stories explore not so much what has happened already but what happens next. Illness bristles through the book, magnifying emotional undercurrents: two teenage girls survive surgery and the prospect of never eating popcorn again; the stoicism of a husband with cancer infuriates his wife. Set in the desert Southwest, these stories show the influence of a landscape populated with cat-eating coyotes and car-crushing boulders. The characters are relative newcomers, some sharing the author’s Mormon heritage. But they are survivors, relying on the ironies and blessings of ongoing life.

"Like the inestimable Lorrie Moore . . . Clyde has an exquisite sense of humor. . . . Clyde’s writing has many strengths, but the greatest one is her ability to transform a shallow experience into something resembling hope. That she does so with intelligence and wit makes this collection as good as they get."—New York Times Book Review