The Women Were Leaving the Men

By Andy Mozina

Book Overview

Intriguing, quirky, and deeply felt stories from writer Andy Mozina, collected in his first full-length fiction release.

Winner, Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award

In The Women Were Leaving the Men, Andy Mozina draws readers into the everyday lives of characters who are instantly relatable but intriguingly flawed. Knocked beyond the brink by departed family members, curious obsessions, and unruly physical attributes, Mozina's characters climb and scrape their way toward intimacy, sanity, and redemption against the often-absurd odds of their lives in this unique, humorous, and poetic collection.

In The Women Were Leaving the Men, readers will encounter numerous haunting characters. A divorced astronaut, back from the moon, tries to rehabilitate his stroke-ridden mother. A young woman must decide whether to stay with a man she suspects of being a murderer. A son helps his mother bake a cake sculpted into the image of his runaway father. A man born with a single enormous hand can barely tell the difference between cleaning and making love. Despite their fantastic twists, every story in The Women Were Leaving the Men is rooted in emotional realism and fueled by the humor and pathos of the characters' conflicts and relationships. Readers will recognize familiar feelings in interactions between lovers, friends, and strangers, all rendered with strikingly real detail and a sense of humor.

Mozina takes us deeply into his characters' complex lives so that we may more fully observe and discover the idiosyncrasies in our own. General readers and anyone interested in short fiction will enjoy this remarkable collection.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814333621
• ISBN13: 9780814333624
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Amazing writing

This collection of short stories is nothing short of amazing. This motley collection of characters may appear odd on the outside, but each of them in their own way speaks to some truth of the human condition. I look forward to hearing more from Mozina--hopefully soon!

The best and most original collection of short stories I've read in ages

I was amazed at how good these stories were. I heard about Mozina from a friend who is more linked into the contemporary literature scene than I am, and ended up reading the stories over a greedy few days. In overall tone, I think the writer Mozina most resembles is Mary Gaitskill. In fact, this book, Mozina's debut collection, reminds me a lot of Gaitskill's own debut, "Bad Behavior." There is the same focus on "edgy" (even occasionally creepy) characters, a fairly large amount of sex and sadness, intense psychological depth, and terrific writing throughout. However, I have to say that Mozina has a better sense of humor than Gaitskill. As some of the other reviews point out, the opening story "Cowboy Pile" is hilarious, and yet it is poignant, too, in its bizarre way. But despite the sometimes bizarre and even raunchy themes of these stories, there are also passages where the writing is almost Nabokovian. For example, in the story "Arch," when two tortured lovers are on a road trip together across the flat Midwest, Mozina writes: "Overpasses, gentle reminders of the third dimension, arc briefly and subside." The only other recent book that caught me unawares with tight, pellucid observations like this was Eugenides' "Middlesex." My only quibble with this collection was that I thought one story, "Beach," should have been left on the cutting-room floor. It was the only one that didn't really ring true for me, and at least shows that Mozina is fallible. But, overall, the other twelve stories really captured me and had someting truly unusual: the ability to surprise and delight. For example, in the last story, "Admit," which chronicles the wrenching psychological descent of a Harvard Law dropout, there is a description of the protagonist's girlfriend and touchstone: "She wore clogs and her fuzzy pink cape, which made her look like some third-tier superhero whose defining power was a staggering capacity for empathy." In the midst of reading about a harrowing breakdown, you can't help but smile. Just be warned, this collection is not for anyone uptight about sex. Many (but not all) of these stories have sex as part of their subject. If you're not a prude, however, in the story "The Enormous Hand," you'll be rewarded by one of the most memorably weird sex scenes in contemporary literature; it is funny and moving at the same time (think Kafka-meets-Updike and you'll not be completely off the mark). It alone is worth the price of admission.

small, tremendous worlds

I found this book by chance at work and started leafing through it, eventually finishing the whole thing by reading a few pages every day. Each of the stories is a microcosm, at the center of which is a vulnerable, well meaning but very deeply emotionally flawed person. The problems encountered by the characters are problems that everyone faces, like the realization that one's deepest desires might be hopelessly at odds with one another, or that behaving in a way consistent with one's values and morals might be really, really difficult. That said, the people in these stories are probably unusually beset with neuroses and more psychological issues than normal -- there's a Harvard law drop out whose frightening, ugly nervous breakdown annihilates his sense of worth and identity in one story and a young, kind, but self conscious priest who finds comfort and reprieve in a woman in another. To read these stories is to get fascinating, first hand insight into what it feels like to struggle with uncertainty and hopefully come out with some semblance of dignity and self worth. Highly recommended.

Terrific

Andy Mozina's writing is especially good at finding real feeling amongst eccentric, unstable, or even unhinged characters and situations. People in these stories often engage in behavior so bizarre that it could be off-putting to anyone but a lover of same, but the sympathy with which Mozina writes the characters does not allow us to turn away so easily. And often times these people know they need to change, but can't. Mozina dramatizes these bad choices very well. Everyone knows, for example, that an abusive relationship is hard to leave. But why? Mozina dramatizes the decisions, good and bad, that could plausibly lead to a failure to change your approach to bad relationships. We see it happen and understand it, without necessarily being able to explain it. Or why do our desires and fetishes rule us so, when all we want to do is end their hold on us? Again, we see people in these stories making decisions we know are wrong, that doom them, but recognize our own bad decisions in them. And of course, the collection opens with "Cowboy Piles," the gold standard for dramatization of the male need to show physical courage and moral strength, even when it's ridiculous. If you are ever lucky enough to attend a reading by Andy Mozina, you should call out for "Cowboy Piles" like it's your last chance to hear your favorite song from your favorite band at their last encore in their farewell performance. Read aloud, the story is that good.

A Layperson's View

Most of these stories are zany as hell. We're talking a cross between Douglas Adams zany, Robin Williams zany, Monty Python zany, with a very slight hint of Woody Allen. (The Woody Allen ingredient is more a flavor than a brand of zany.) In many of these stories, the main character is on a continuum, with "I'm OK" on one end, and "I've totally lost 'it'" on the other end. The stories relate how these characters keep 'it' together, work thru 'it', endeavor to get beyond 'it'; the characters work to 'stay onboard' rather than 'go overboard'. The characters in general deal with normal life situations and feelings in very funny, wacky ways. These stories are very accessible, and I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. :-)