Unkempt Stories [Paperback]

In the seven stories and one novella collected in Unkempt, Courtney Eldridge gives life to characters of astounding originality. Probing the darker corners of the human psyche, she shows-with a sly and unexpected sense of humor-the neurotic mind at work, the skewed perspective of an alcoholic parent, the nature of sexual conquest, and the hazards of working in retail. Fresh, funny, and candid, Eldridge's writing delivers a new and marvelous vision of life.

PRAISE FOR UNKEMPT
New Yorker Courtney Eldridge creates dark chaotic worlds, then traps the reader inside this space until they have read the last word, thereby becoming her collaborator . . . Eldridge's [obsessions] are bloody, naked and screaming. It's hard not to look.
-SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

[A] skewed, jittery, dazzlingly original collection . . . Neurosis is to Eldridge's stories what suburbia was to Cheever's: it's at once context, antagonist and metasubject. Her brilliant trick is to write in a voice so colloquially familiar that we don't automatically classify these crazy people as 'the other' but rather recognize them as our friends, our family members or even ourselves. -THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

COURTNEY ELDRIDGE's stories have been published in McSweeney's, the Mississippi Review, Nerve, and Salt Hill Journal. She lives in New York City.

Fits & Starts

What happens is I write a first sentence, then I read the sentence that I've just written, and then I immediately erase that sentence; then I begin anew by writing another first sentence for a completely different story; then another first sentence for another story, so on and so forth. Though I might not immediately write, read, and erase: a week or two or more might pass before the sentence (paragraph, page, or twenty pages) begins to bother me. At first, I usually think the sentence is fine, good even. And at those times, feeling okay about the sentence, I read and rel³"