I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Bergs first story collection since her prizewinning bookThe Isle of Youth, draws readers into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and the mind. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Bergs trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Iceland,I Hold a Wolf by the Earsis uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the fears we reveal to no one but ourselves.

In Lizards, a man mutes his wifes anxieties by giving her a LaCroix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and destructive consequences, while in Karolina, a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother.

I Hold a Wolf by the Earspresents a collection of women on the verge, trying to grasp whats left of life: grieving, divorced, and hyperaware, searching, vulnerable, and unhinged, they exist in a world that deviates from our own only when you look too closely. With remarkable control and transcendent talent, van den Berg dissolves, in the words of the narrator of Slumberland, that border between magic and annihilation, and further establishes herself as a defining fiction writer of our time.

Released July 27, 2021