Can't and Won't: Stories
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
The New York Times - Los Angeles Times - The Boston Globe
Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of "Bloomington" reads, "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert's correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author's own dreams, or the dreams of friends.
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"Widely considered one of the most original minds in American fiction today."--Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker
"This is what the best and most original literature can do: make us more acutely aware of life on and off the page."--Peter Orner, The New York Times Book Review
"[Can't and Won't] is evidence of a writer who is in total control of her own peculiar original voice; its pleasures are unexpected and manifold."--Kate Christensen, Elle
"A master of sequencing. Davis mixes long and short dispatches to intoxicating effect."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"The most revolutionary collection of stories by an American in twenty-five years."--John Freeman, The Boston Globe
"Drop everything and pick up Lydia Davis's fifth collection of short stories...Observation, drama, and (yes) compression--it's all there, giving the most minor moments a kind of epic weight."--David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times
"Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive."--Claire Messud, Financial Times
"Davis dances right up to and around that final mystery that can't, won't, and must be borne, that most inexplicable magic trick, life's vanishing act."--Parul Sehgal, NPR
"Davis is official literary dynamite...Everything she writes looks effortless."--San Francisco Chronicle
