Music Through the Floor Stories [Paperback]

Includes a new story, Body Language !

Now in paperback, Eric Puchner's celebrated debut collection, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, established him as one of our most brilliant and promising new literary voices.

Writing from an impressive range of perspectives -- men and women, children and adults, immigrants and tourists -- Puchner deftly exposes the dark, tender undersides of his characters with arresting beauty and precision. Here are people fumbling for identity in a dehumanizing world, captured in moments that are hilarious, shocking, and transcendent, sometimes all at once. Unfailingly true, surprisingly moving, and impossible to forget, these stories make up an extraordinary and strikingly original collection. Riveting...In this melodious collection, Puchner proves to be uncannily in tune with the heartbreak and absurdity of domestic life.

--Los Angeles Times An awe-inspiring debut that introduces readers to Puchner's great strength: the ability to chronicle the oddest of behaviors with a humane, unsparing voice.

--Entertainment Weekly Stories with style, heft, and real endings...Puchner puts the story back in short story.

--San Francisco Chronicle Book Review This is the most auspicious debut of a short story collection that I have encountered in years....If there is any justice left in the world, this book will be widely read and celebrated.

-- Charles Baxter, author ofThe Feast of Loveand Saul and Patsy