“…Profoundly moving … a textured, imaginative debut collection. Inventive and emotionally observant writing.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Satisfying and often joyful, these stories concern family connections and childhood memories.” – Foreword Reviews
“There’s an echo of Jean Shepherd’s work here, a humorous and slightly fictionalized recounting of an affectionality-recalled if not perfect childhood and life – instead of a Red Ryder BB gun, a young boy carries around a pillow case full of explosives with which to battle Nazis … Feingold writes with tremendous charm and has a gentle, affectionate attitude toward his characters and their situations …” – IndieReader
Sixteen tales, both humorous and poignant, many of which examine family relations and Ukrainian Jewish heritage. The collection opens with the title story, which describes a vegetarian son venturing to a deli to buy his dying father a black pastrami on rye with extra mustard. The errand leads the man to reflect on his own life, marked by a stultifying sense of helplessness. “Here’s Looking at You, Syd” is about a husband and wife who journey to Moscow to adopt a child but are confronted by a wall of Russian bureaucracy. Other stories examine coming of age; in “The Buzz Bomb,” a young boy takes playing war games too far and is met with disastrous consequences. Similarly in “The Wrong Napkin,” childish naïveté leads to an embarrassing misjudgment and a chat about the differences between men and women. In “Goth Girl,” a young aspiring writer falls for a darkly aloof poet. Stories such as “Avalanche” and “My Left Foot” celebrate familial relationships with pet dogs, whereas “America’s Test Chicken” is a tongue-in-cheek tale of the launch of “one of the hottest cooking shows on cable TV.” Things take a weirdly humorous twist in “Seventh Sense” when a dentist offers “tissue harvested from the departed” to address a patient’s gum complaint. The collection closes with “The Sugar Thief,” about an embarrassing auntie who steals sugar sachets from the diner.
Jeffrey M. Feingold is a bestselling author in Boston. His stories have been nominated for the Pen America Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, the Pushcart Prize, the Exeter Story Prize, and The Best American Short Stories. His books have won a National Indie Excellence Award, a Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, a PenCraft Award, the Indie Reader Discovery Award, and have been finalists for the Eyelands Book Awards, the Wishing Shelf Awards, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the International Book Awards, and the Santa Fe Writers Project Awards.
Jeffrey’s acclaimed debut short story collection, The Black Hole Pastrami, was followed by There Is No Death in Finding Nemo, an Amazon bestseller.
Jeffrey’s work appears in magazines, such as the international Intrepid Times, and in The Bark (a national magazine with readership over 250,000). Jeffrey’s work has also been published in anthologies, and by numerous literary reviews and journals, including The Pinch, Maudlin House, Wilderness House Literary Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere. Jeffrey’s stories about family, about the tension between heritage versus assimilation, and about love, loss, regret, and forgiveness, reveal a sense of absurdity tempered by a love of people and their quirky ways.
“… Profound tales featuring colorful imagery and accessible characters … many readers will relate to the lives of the those in the seven tales herein.” – Kirkus Reviews
“…Poignant, frequently hilarious, and almost always surreal.” – IndieReader
“Magic realism flickers about in Jeffrey M. Feingold’s superb short story collection, There Is No Death in Finding Nemo … The contrast of generations – of time passing and things lost – is stunning.” – Frances Park, award-winning author of The Summer My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon
“Atmospheric and intriguing, these short stories hide sinister implications beneath everyday realities … choices are made and promises are broken; unsolicited advice is given; traumatic memories resurface. Still, there are also fleeting moments of joy. The prose is atmospheric throughout the book.” – Foreword Reviews
Seemingly simple lives are full of surprises in this collection of short stories.
Music student Dakota,in the opening title story, ignores her sister’s warning about her too-fast relationship. She moves in with Zayden, a real estate developer who certainly seems like an ambitious, responsible older man, after just a few dates. Things change drastically after Dakota unearths what’s hiding in her boyfriend’s home office. Similarly, in “Avram’s Miracle,” hopeful new business partners tour the world’s biggest matzah bakery, which is in Cincinnati. They’re gunning for “worldwide matzah domination” but are unexpectedly taken aback by apprentice baker Avram’s invention. This impressive device may be able to feed masses for free, but is that really what these food industrialists want? Many readers will relate to the lives of those in the seven tales herein: an aging man pining for youth in “The Mirror” and a woman long denying her own very real mental condition in“The Loneliest Number.”Still, surreal moments intermittently crop up. In “The Box,” for example, a stranger hands the titular item to art professor Francine, who’s sitting alone at a restaurant. “For happiness,” the nameless woman tells her before quickly departing. The wooden box’s glass top periodically glows with pictures of people with whom Francine has recently conversed, but she’s not immediately clear why it does so. This story, like the others, showcases the effects of unpredictable happenings on everyday lives.
Coming Winter 2024
