Wifeshopping: Stories

By Steven Wingate

Book Overview

Wifeshopping centers on the ultimate human quest: the search for companionship, love, and understanding. These captivating stories feature American men, love-starved and striving, who try and often fail to connect with the women they imagine could be their wives. Some of the women are fianc?es, some are new girlfriends, some are strangers who cross the men's paths for only a few hours or moments.
In "Beaching It," an artist traveling on the summer circuit begins an affair with a rich, married local. In "Me and Paul," a lonely traveler adopts an alter ego to help him impress a single mother. In "Bill," a trip to a flea market highlights the essential differences between a man and his fianc?e. Throughout this thoroughly entertaining read, Wingate's sympathetic characterizations reveal both the hopefulness and the heartache behind our earnest but sometimes misguided attempts at intimacy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0547053657
• ISBN13: 9780547053653
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

If Jane Austen was a guy writing in 21st century America, this is the book she would write

Reading this short story collection cover to cover it's easy to see why Wingate's collection won the annual Breadloaf prize--no duds in this bunch, every single story is solid and thoughtful and absolutely true to lived experience. An added bonus: Wingate has a great humorous touch, sometimes it's right out front, other times it's lurking between the lines, but he knows how to mix the funny and the profound in a way that makes these stories a pleasure to read on every level. All of these stories concern love, courtship, sex, marriage in one form or another, but Wingate keeps coming at it from different angles. "A Story About Two Prisoners" for example, is a love story like no other, oblique and ultimately heartbreaking. While most story collections lead with the strongest efforts the author has to offer, this one, interestingly, saves the best for last. In "Our Last Garage Sale" and "In Flagstaff" Wingate delivers his best writing--sharp, funny, merciless stories that kept this reader's complete attention to the last line. This is a first-rate story collection by a writer to watch.