Hard Language Short Stories

9781558852983

1558852980

With his first book of short stories, young California writer Mike Padilla has produced a collection of remarkable social scope, artistic maturity, & psychological subtlety. In the title story, a Mexican-American construction worker's jealousy & controlling behavior become entwined with dark resentment of his wife's English-speaking abilities. Among the writer's other startling snapshots, Padilla captures the day the family brought out a pickaxe to tear apart old Aunt Eufrasia's house ("It is like the christening of a ship," my mother said as the pickaxe swung, but no one looked at her) ... the uneasy relationship holding together two elderly women who were once best friends but are now only housemates ... the odd kinship felt between a wealthy & attractive, but emotionally remote, Stanford student & her studious, cocaine-dealing classmate, who decides the best way to a girl's heart is through her nose ... that special love shared only among family members ("Wait until you're fat & have a lot of pimples," she told her cousin. "The girls will all run away from you screaming their heads off, & you'll want to kill yourself.") ... & a nervous romance between a fourteen-year-old Mexican tom-boy & her new neighbor, a clumsy young Russian emigre who falls all too hard for her. Stories in the collection include: * Papel * The Reason for Angels * Hard Language * Carrying Sergei * Restoration * Who in the Modern World Can Keep Up With Julia Juarez? * Flora in Shadows * The King of Snow.