American Estrangement

Stories

By: Said Sayrafiezadeh

Narrated by: David Bendena, Pete Cross, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Mark Owen, Qarie Marshall, Stephen Prechtl, Lynch Travis

Said Sayrafiezadeh has been hailed by Philip Gourevitch as “a masterful storyteller working from deep in the American grain”. His new collection of stories - some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories - are set in a contemporary America full of the kind of emotionally bruised characters familiar to fans of Denis Johnson and George Saunders. These are people contending with internal struggles - a son’s fractured relationship with his father, the death of a mother, the loss of a job, drug addiction - even as they are battered by the larger, often invisible, economic and political forces of American society.

Searing, intimate, often slyly funny, and always marked by a deep imaginative sympathy, American Estrangement is a testament to our addled times. It will cement Sayrafiezadeh’s reputation as one of the essential 21st-century American writers.

©2021 Said Sayrafiezadeh (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC

A collection filled with wonderful surprises, and one disturbing element.

I have never been exposed to this author’s work before, and found it wonderful in all respects until I reached the story near the end that deals in part with descriptions of sexual abuse of children. I don’t need to be exposed to that, and I suspect most people do not want to be. I thought about lowering my rating from five stars to four, but decided against doing so in the spirit (I suppose) of open mindedness. I am not really a very open minded guy. That aside, I have not enjoyed fiction to this extent in many years. I salute the author for 95% of the contents of this work.