MAN V. NATURE

Here's a good rule: If Diane Cook wrote it, read it. Safety is tenuous, if not an illusion, in her thoughtful, unsettling, and darkly funny collection, ‘Man V. Nature.' Read more...

Man v. Nature may be Diane Cook's first book, but the former This American Life producer's work is impressively precocious—making it our favorite short-story collection of October. . . . These stories are absurdist in the vein of George Saunders, hyped-up and often just plain weird, meaning if you're a Saunders fan (and you are, right?), you'll probably appreciate these stories too. Read more...

One of the 5 Great Books to Read In December: “I couldn't pry myself away from Man V Nature, the short story collection by Diane Cook, in which she creates a series of slightly off-kilter realities and the unremarkable characters who inhabit them. . . . The stories are grim, violent, and darkly funny, but never so far removed from our most human urges to seem TOTALLY implausible.”

“MAN V. NATURE is a knockout every single story could make a great movie ‘Somebody's Baby' completely captures the crippling, animal-like vigilance of early motherhood. I had to put the book down and just sob, and I was thrilled at the same time, thinking: ‘It works! This medium really works!'” MIRANDA JULY, New York Times Book Review “MAN V. NATURE could also be called Diane Cook V. The Challenges of Writing Fresh, Invigorating Fiction in Our Age. In the latter contest, Cook crushes. Here is a bold debut.” SAM LIPSYTE, author of Home Land “Diane Cook's writing is sharp, bawdy, bold and often hilarious. Her stories are refreshingly crude and her imagination is unbounded. Like her characters, Cook does what she wants. Her world is another universe, where people are wilder.” REBECCA CURTIS, author of Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money “Diane Cook's stories are like high-wattage bulbs strung across a sinister, dark land. MAN V. NATURE is equal parts dazzle and depth.” RAMONA AUSUBEL, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born What I like most about these stories is that many of them are dispatches from the end of the world, and it turns out to be a surprisingly familiar place. -- IRA GLASS, Host, This American Life I'm not sure exactly when the current wave of apocalyptic literature began - or if there's even the possibility that it will lessen or plateau before this planet reaches its end, but I haven't read anything that tackles the anxiety of oblivion better than Diane Cook's MAN V. NATURE. -- CATHERINE LACEY, author of Nobody Is Ever Missing Seethes with heat, rejection and twisted perception - I found myself enthralled by all of the stories in this collection. Not only are they surprising, but also fresh, funny, sad, often surreal and oddly true. -- CLAIRE CAMERON, author of The Bear MAN V. NATURE is as close to experiencing a Picasso as literature can get: the worlds in Diane Cook's impressive debut are bizarre, vertiginous, funny, pushed to the extreme-but just familiar enough in their nuances of the human condition to evoke an irresistible, around-the-corner reality. -- TÉA OBREHT, author of The Tiger's Wife Masterful... Each darkly comic modern fable reveals our societal preoccupations -- with status, sex, motherhood, belonging -- for what they really are: thin veneers over our ever-present animal selves, ready to crack at the merest provocation. A book that'll grab your attention and keep you thinking. --HELENE WECKER, author of The Golem And The Jinni This week, I have been reading the most astonishing book, MAN V. NATURE by Diane Cook. The stories are surreal, with the sharpest edge and in one way or another, each story reveals something raw and powerful about being human in a world where so little is in our control. -- ROXANE GAY, author of Bad Feminist

Best Fiction of 2014 (Laura Collins-Hughes's picks) Read more...

28 Feminist Writers Recommend Books Every Man Should Read “Hunger, despair, and perpetual awe for the collapsing natural world and the vulnerability of existence therein. Apply liberally before exposure to the elements. Contents include truth and other known allergens.” Read more...

Man V. Nature could also be called Diane Cook V. The Challenges of Writing Fresh, Invigorating Fiction in Our Age. In the latter contest, Cook crushes. Here is a bold debut.

MAN V. NATURE is as close to experiencing a Picasso as literature can get: the worlds in Diane Cook's impressive debut are bizarre, vertiginous, funny, pushed to the extreme-but just familiar enough in their nuances of the human condition to evoke an irresistible, around-the-corner reality.

NL: Meridiaan;

Cook's potent and unnerving stories depict ghastly battles between humans and the brute forces of nature. Adept at a stark spookiness in the vein of Shirley Jackson and William Golding, Cook also summons up a lonely weirdness like that of Aimee Bender and George Saunders. A canny, refined, and reverberating debut.

One of the top 10 Best Fiction of the Year, alongside Anthony Doerr, David Mitchell, Lorrie Moore, Joshua Ferris, Jane Smiley, Matthew Thomas and others.

It's a curiously exhilarating experience to pick up a story collection by a new author and become seduced by the writer's original voice and vision. This was exactly what happened when this reader sat down with the darkly comic and sad stories of Diane Cook's debut collection Cook is interested in exploring a subversive breed of narrative, more in the absurdist vernacular of George Saunders, Chris Adrian and Aimee Bender Many of Cook's stories could come off as empty technical exercises, but instead read like complete miniature portraits of human failings and losses. Like the best kind of fiction, the reader is left with much to think about within the broad realms of sex, death, love and friendship Read more...