The Law of Strings and Other Stories
by Steven Gillis
Fiction/Stories, Trade Paperback Original
ISBN 978-0-9832080-8-2
5.25 x 8 in/180 pages
Publication Date: August 28, 2012
The Law of Strings and Other Stories is an existential yelp examining individual choices and our all-too-human response to unexpected events. Fans of George Saunders and Aimee Bender will delight in Gillis’ surprising surrealist twists in the heart of painfully real emotion and interpersonal relationships. From a tightrope walker abandoning his trade to an Immovable Girl learning to levitate, The Law of Strings explores what happens at the crossroads in our lives and how we decide what matters most in a world defined by chaos.
Praise for The Law of Strings
“[T]his story collection hooked me from story one and continued to captivate to the end. Expert dialog and movement and resolution in each piece…This is a book you could read in a sitting or two. The pace is that swift; the stories are that good.”
– STEPHEN DIXON, two-time National Book Award finalist
“Very few writers would dare explore, in a collection of stories, the intersections between quantum physics and everyday ethics, between cosmic law and domestic habit; fewer still could make those intersections so compelling and surreal and surprising, and could make the pages sing by so quickly; only Steven Gillis can provide just this bracing combination of thoughtfulness and spiked wit and deadpan finesse. The Law of Strings is a revelation—strange, barbed, and original.”
– MICHAEL GRIFFITH, author of the novels Trophy, Bibliophilia and Spikes
“The book’s theme and tone are reminiscent of early Thomas Pynchon — bizarrely clever tales that are as much about human relationships as they are about the frontiers of speculative science.”
-SMALL PRESS REVIEWS
“The tales quickly wrap themselves around you and make you realize that nothing should be taken for granted and that in our seemingly ordered world, ruled by natural forces, anything is possible.”
-VOUCHED BOOKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Gillis is the author of Walter Falls, The Weight of Nothing, Giraffes, Temporary People, and The Consequence of Skating. His stories, articles, and book reviews have appeared in over four dozen journals, and his books have been finalists for the Independent Publishers Book of the Year Award and the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year among others. A three-year member of the Ann Arbor Book Festival Board of Directors, and a finalist for the 2007 Ann Arbor News Citizen of the Year, Steve also founded 826michigan and is the co-founder of Dzanc Books. Steve taught writing at Eastern Michigan University for three years.