Phantom Pain

“Lydia Peelle is one of the most exciting new voices in American fiction. These stories surprise and take hold of the reader, all of them elegies for the passing of youth and an era, and the astonishing turns life can take, told in the living idiom of our times. No one else has written so well about the world of contemporary Nashville, about the way it was, and is, and is becoming.” - Robert Morgan, author of GAP CREEK and BRAVE ENEMIES

“Expect to meet characters so realistic their shadows will grace your hand as you turn the pages of this dark and beautiful world of southern writing at its most elegant. I’ve never read a book this good that wasn’t considered a classic.” - Simon Van Booy, author of THE SECRET LIVES OF PEOPLE IN LOVE

“Peelle writes her meaty characters with vigor and packs each tale with descriptions so subtly vibrant that they warrant multiple visits.” - Publishers Weekly

“Peelle’s stories in REASONS FOR AND ADVANTAGES OF BREATHING carry a memory of the Southern past that we might find in a short story by Flannery O’Connor or Eudora Welty.” - BOMB Magazine

“Rock-solid prose, surprising connections, and resounding transformations add up to powerful and significant stories of improvised life in a consumed world.” - Booklist (starred review)

“The eight stories in Lydia Peelle’s debut collection are remarkable for their clarity and precision. . . . artful...” - BookForum

“[The stories] read like fully formed classics, as if Bob Dylan was rewriting the stories of Alice Munro. These are eight clear and precise gems, deeply rooted in Southern soil, and alive with every pore to heartbreak and possibility.” - Louisville Courier Journal

“An incredible collection of eight gorgeously crafted stories, with wonderfully drawn characters whose individual tales stay with you.” - San Francisco Chronicle

“Lydia Peelle’s lovely, fluid voice lures you into a world full of heartbreak and devastation.... calls to mind masters of the unsettling short story like Mary Gaitskill, or even Alice Munro. … [Peelle] has the makings of a writer who defies labels and creates her own categories.” - New York Times Book Review

“With humor and insight, these sharply etched fictions illuminate turning points...in lives conscribed by limited horizons.... Peelle vividly evokes a setting and brings its inhabitants...instantly and convincingly to life.” - Boston Globe

“Peelle’s acute perception of a squandered world inspires complex, suspenseful stories that celebrate life’s endless improvisation and assertion....darkly lyrical, ironic and compassionate stories...brilliant and stunning.” - Kansas City Star