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Wild Failure  By  cover art

Wild Failure

By: Zoe Whittall
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
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Publisher's summary

A dazzling debut collection of short stories from bestselling author Zoe Whittall

“Absorbing and wrenchingly intimate, with a rare balance of wit and tenderness.”—Jenny Fran Davis, author of Dykette

In Wild Failure, characters encounter feelings of shame, desire, attachment, and disconnection as they find themselves navigating their way through bad decisions, unusual situations, and fraught relationships.

In “Oh, El,” a dominant woman can’t stop herself from toying with the tender heart of her co-worker. The title story, “Wild Failure,” is a doomed love story between an agoraphobic and a wilderness hiker. In “Half-Pipe,” a teen girl’s heterosexual ambivalence results in chaos at a skate park. A group of idealistic roommates find themselves the subject of a true crime podcast in “Murder at the Elm Street Collective House.” In “The Sex Castle Lunch Buffet,” a woman reflects on her brief stint at a nineties strip club after she learns of the death of a former client.

Wild Failure is replete with Whittall’s perceptive humor and acute insights into human nature. It’s also a dynamic and vibrant collection of poetic fiction that contend with the meaning of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness.

©2024 Zoe Whittall (P)2024 Random House Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: LGBTQ+

Critic reviews

“Phenomenal . . . Whittall compresses entire worlds into the most alive of sentences.”—Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

“These beautiful stories of longing and connection vibrate with emotional honesty and sharp detail. . . . A dirty, tender collection.”—Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)fertility

“Rigorously humane, funny, and forgiving—you know these characters well.”—Donovan Woods, musician

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