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Sign up todayWe’ve Already Gone This Far
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Learn moreA heartfelt, vital collection; the debut of an exciting new talent already hailed as one of George Saunders’ “favorite young American writers”
In Patrick Dacey’s stunning debut, we meet longtime neighbors and friends—citizens of working-class Wequaquet—right when the ground beneath their feet has shifted in ways they don’t yet understand. Here, after more than a decade of boom and bust, love and pride are closely twinned and dangerously deployed: a lonely woman attacks a memorial to a neighbor’s veteran son; a dissatisfied housewife goes overboard with cosmetic surgery on national television; a young father walks away from one of the few jobs left in town; and a soldier writes home to a mother who is becoming increasingly unhinged. We’ve Already Gone This Far takes us to a town like many towns in America, a place where people are searching for what is now an almost out-of-reach version of the American Dream.
Story by story, Dacey draws us into the secret lives of recognizable strangers and reminds us that life’s strange intensity and occasional magic is all around us, especially in the everyday. With a skewering insight and real warmth of spirit, Dacey delivers that rare and wonderful thing in American fiction: a deeply felt, deeply imagined book about where we’ve been and how far we have to go.
Patrick Dacey holds an MFA from Syracuse University. He has taught English at several universities in the United States and Mexico and has worked as a reporter, landscaper, door-to-door salesman, and most recently on the overnight staff at a homeless shelter and detox center. His stories have been featured in Zoetrope All-Story, Guernica, Bomb magazine, and Salt Hill, among other publications. Originally from Cape Cod, he currently lives in Virginia.
Tanya Eby is an Audie-nominated and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. AudioFile magazine says, "Listening to Tanya Eby is like listening to a full-cast recording." Tanya has a BA in English language and literature and an MFA in creative writing. Besides narrating, Tanya blogs and works on her own novels. She has published four novels and is at work on her fifth.
Lloyd James has been narrating since 1996, has recorded over six hundred books in almost every genre, has earned six AudioFile Earphones Awards, and is a two-time nominee for the prestigious Audie Award. His bestselling and most critically acclaimed performances include Elvis in the Morning by William F. Buckley, Jr., Ben Hur by Lew Wallace, Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitskin, and Mystic Warrior by Tracy and Laura Hickman. Lloyd's background as a performer includes extensive work in classical theater and folk music. He lives in Maryland with his wife and children.
Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Reviews
“Patrick Dacey is one of my favorite young American writers. The stories in We’ve Already Gone This Far are dangerous, funny, sometimes savage (the phrase ‘lyrical hammers’ comes to mind), but underneath it all beats a strangely kind and hopeful heart. Dacey is channeling both a terrifyingly dark view of America as well as a movingly optimistic one, and he shows us that the truth of who we are lies in that very juxtaposition. Fast, poetic, edgy, full of tremendous affection for the things of the world.”
“We’ve Already Gone this Far is a strong, intelligent, deeply-felt book; Patrick Dacey is a beautiful and natural writer.”
“These tales of neighborly conflicts, professional and personal malaise, and family tragedy are marked by a certain buoyancy. In describing these frustrated lives, Dacey can be as funny as he is compassionate…Dacey’s breakout collection shows that small towns can still yield big fictional rewards.”
“In the keen, observational short-story style of writers such as George Saunders and Lauren Groff, We’ve Already Gone This Far illuminates both the quotidian details and the profound strangeness of modern American life. Readers will find this set of mournful, biting, and resonant tales united not only by geography but also by Dacey’s deep humanity towards his flawed characters.”
“A fine debut collection from a storyteller who improves as the stakes get higher.”
“These thirteen stories are linked not just through place and character but also by their pursuit of a warped form of happiness. Together they provide a startling portrait of American life today. A daringly resonant collection with the best endings in the business.”
“Whether a used-car salesman or past-his-prime coach or lonely mother of a deployed soldier, the characters in Dacey’s collection are ‘living on these images of the past’ looking for something that glimmers just out of reach. A book that brims with unguarded humanity and quiet moments of communion, I couldn’t stop reading it. Dacey is a masterful prose stylist, a vibrant and original new literary voice.”
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