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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Fiction & Related items

FOX TOOTH HEART

John McManus

Stories

John McManus's long awaited short story collection encompasses the geographic limits of America, from trailers hidden in deep Southern woods to an Arkansas ranch converted into an elephant refuge.

His lost-soul characters reel precariously between common anxiety and drug-enhanced paranoia, sober reality and fearsome hallucination. These nine masterpieces of twisted humor and pathos re-establish McManus as one of the most bracing voices of our time. John McManus is the author of the novel Bitter Milk and the short story collections Born on a Train and Stop Breakin Down, all published by Picador. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Oxford American, The Literary Review, Harvard Review, and many other places. He is the youngest-ever recipient of the Whiting Award.

Available products
Book Published 2015-11-10 by Sarabande Books

Comments

“Fox Tooth Heart,” which takes its title from a Tennessee Williams poem, isn’t going to be every book club’s next selection. But the exciting thing about reading McManus is watching how closely he skirts toward exploitative, lurid caricature, then routinely swerves into territory that is humane and insightful.... McManus burrows deep under the skins of his rough, cast-out characters and emerges with stories that are bold and ingenious. Read more...

McManus invites readers on an eccentric journey through Southern, Southwestern, and Middle America in this collection of wildly inventive short stories. Though they’re set in America, they exist in a meticulously crafted world, quite different than our own.... McManus delves into the minds of his characters, allowing readers to experience their anxieties, delusions, fantasies, and fears.

In his new collection of stories, Fox Tooth Heart, John McManus puts his arm around our shoulder and walks us out to the margin, calmly pointing out all the unfortunate souls who have stepped across the thin line. When he turns us away from the grotesque, toward the homes his characters can’t find their way back to, the familiar is dizzying in its sway.

McManus shows a quirky originality in these nine stories as he focuses on the outré and bizarre doings of his off-center characters. Along with creating a compelling cast, McManus shows himself a master of openings. With his strange cast of drunks, murderers, and the drug-addled, McManus fits comfortably into a tradition of Gothic writing, adding his own—dare one say peculiar?—twists.