![]() ![]() ![]() Even the collection’s title has a sardonic ring. If sometimes his overwhelmed characters fail to fully engage emotionally, their deadpan delivery of jolting ironies reaches to laugh out loud heights of insight. Tod Goldberg’s fine ear for dialogue and for the spoken nuances of social microstrata enable him to dispense with reams of descriptive background and cut straight to the heart of the matter. ![]() ![]() Simplify, the first collection of short fiction by Tod Goldberg, portrays a world where redemption, hope, and violence are never too far apart. Simplify mines the often surreal terrain of people on the margins of life: from the man with a photo of Elvis bleeding on his wall in ‘Comeback Special,’ to the profoundly troubled boy genius of the title story ‘ Simplify,’ to the family that must traverse ‘The Distance Between Us’ to finally get to the truth about their son the murderer, each story hums with sharp drama, mystery, wonder, and startling humor. From the author of the acclaimed novel Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, come twelve haunting stories about people caught somewhere between love and madness. ![]()
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