American Estrangement

Stories

Said Sayrafiezadeh has been hailed by Philip Gourevitch as “a masterful storyteller working from deep in the American grain”. His new collection of stories - some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories - are set in a contemporary America full of the kind of emotionally bruised characters familiar to fans of Denis Johnson and George Saunders. These are people contending with internal struggles - a son’s fractured relationship with his father, the death of a mother, the loss of a job, drug addiction - even as they are battered by the larger, often invisible, economic and political forces of American society.

Searing, intimate, often slyly funny, and always marked by a deep imaginative sympathy, American Estrangement is a testament to our addled times. It will cement Sayrafiezadeh’s reputation as one of the essential 21st-century American writers.

©2021 Said Sayrafiezadeh (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC

A collection filled with wonderful surprises, and one disturbing element.

I have never been exposed to this author’s work before, and found it wonderful in all respects until I reached the story near the end that deals in part with descriptions of sexual abuse of children. I don’t need to be exposed to that, and I suspect most people do not want to be. I thought about lowering my rating from five stars to four, but decided against doing so in the spirit (I suppose) of open mindedness. I am not really a very open minded guy. That aside, I have not enjoyed fiction to this extent in many years. I salute the author for 95% of the contents of this work.