Description: Achingly intelligent....[David Means] stands among our most gifted younger writers." -- New York Times "David Means knows his way around the English language. [The Secret Goldfish] aims toward a mythology of the modern heartland...so lovely I want to quote the whole thing." -- Los Angeles Times "Vivid...Means's last collection was a finalist for the National Book Award...the stories here are just as unsentimental and tightly wound." -- New York Times Book Review "A darkly comic cache of stories . . . impressively inventive." -- Elle "With stunning simplicity, Means offers 15 stirring portraits of tragedy, loss, and love." -- Esquire "An imaginative and penetrating collection." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Riveting...it is Means' signature talent to view the lives of his characters, and life itself, from somewhere just beyond..." -- Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex "Lean, agile...There's not a cheap emotion or a predictable conclusion to be found...humane [and] unaccountably lovely." -- New York Times Book Review on Assorted Fire Events "A splendid short story collection...from one of the most original writers of short fiction working today -- Esquire on Assorted Fire Events Crystalline." -- The New Yorker on Assorted Fire Events "We care for the characters as if we have known and loved and detested them forever...An exceptional book." -- Michael Faber on Assorted Fire Events "Means is a courageous writer, intelligent and funny and humane...the pleasure in reading THE SECRET GOLDFISH is tremendous." -- Donald Antrim

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