How To Carry Bigfoot Home [Paperback]

The thirteen stories in Chris Tarrys richly imagined debut,How To Carry Bigfoot Home, lay bare the insurmountable forces that determine who we are and who we become. From an out-of-work dragon-slaying father in Here Be Dragons to a family arguing aboard a rocket ship in Topics in Advanced Rocketry, the stories use fantastic settings, blazing wit, and imaginative circumstances to explore very human truths. The stories work to reconcile the public self with the private heart. To contemplate the monsters we carry home and lay bare for the ones we love the most.

“Chris Tarry’s stories come at what we might call The Problem of Men as Boys from all possible angles, from a hapless medieval stay-at-home Dad who’s running a con game out of his one-room hovel to a Bigfoot who’s a sad failure as a creative writing teacher. These stories hilariously and poignantly evoke the way, when it comes to relationships, all men are living under a leaky thatched roof with winter on the way, always believing they’re on the edge of a turnaround, even though failure keeps returning like an old friend back in town.”
—Jim Shepard, Story Prize–winning author ofYou Think That’s BadandProject X
 
“The stories in How To Carry Bigfoot Home are fruitfully obsessed with maleness: How does one manage to be a father, a son, a brother, a husband? What are men supposed to do, and what mischief and violence might they have up their sleeves? In their gleeful linguistic play and surrealistic vibe, Tarry’s tales remind me of those of George Saunders, but he’s up to his very own wonderful thing in this vivid debut.”
—Pamela Erens, author ofThe VirginsandThe Understory
 
“Chris Tarry knows from monsters, and from disasters, and from love. He’s now decided to share it all with us. I think Il³$