Daddy

An exceptionally impressive collection of stories from Sunday Times. bestselling author of The Girls. , Emma Cline. ‘I don't know which is more amazing, Emma Cline's understanding of human beings or her mastery of language’ Mark Haddon. The stories in Cline’s first collection consider the dark corners of human experience, exploring the fault lines of power between men and women, parents and children, past and present. A man travels to his son’s school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done. And who is to blame. A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she’s playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father. Emma Cline’s outstanding stories explore masculinity, male power and broken relationships, while revealing - with astonishing insight and clarity - those moments of misunderstanding or miscommunication, when something can slip, or go off-kilter, that can have life-changing consequences. There is a simmering violence lurking, in the depiction of the complicated interactions between men and women. Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories are unforgettable.