The Celibacy Club
This vibrant collection of nineteen short stories by the two-time winner of the prestigious O. Henry Prize is by turns erotic, wildly funny, bawdy, and poignant. Eidus explores our contemporary obsessions: sex—both safe and not-so-safe; Prozac, the drug of choice; exercise machine mania; the sinister attraction of vampires; film star James Dean; and rock ‘n’ roll icons Axl Rose and Elvis—all with dazzling range.
From Publishers Weekly starred review: “The stories are varied, fable-like (in the case of “The Art of Forgiveness”) or epistolary ( “Aunt Lulu, the Condom Lady, Dispenses Advice”) or fantastical (like “The Ping-Pong Vampire”). But whatever the style, Eidus ultimately turns each story into a well-conceived, finely executed and deeply moving tale.”
(Read more from Publishers Weekly below)
Praise
“Balancing humor and depth, the 19 short stories in this collection reflect the quirky voice, at once cynical and sincere, that has made Eidus a two-time winner of the O. Henry Award. Eidus’s stories have serious subtexts of isolation, addiction, abuse and despair.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“These stories have a rare and raw excitement about them. They lull us into a kind of complacency and then grab us by the throat and shake us hard. They let us laugh ourselves right to the edge of terror. They are entirely impossible and deeply true, and in this contradiction they dazzle us, they stun us, they show us precisely where we live.”
—Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness
“Janice Eidus’ quirky characters seek transcendence in exotic ways and they sometimes even find it. These unpredictable stories demonstrate that Janice Eidus continues to be … one of the freshest and most idiosyncratic voices from the fiction frontier.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
