Two Californias
Quirky, bittersweet, and darkly funny, Robert Glick laces the psychological realism of family drama with lyric, associative language and intricate plot structures. A young boy goes on a quest to buy an elephant pendant that he believes will save his parents' marriage. An anarchist, channeling his rage from his father's premature death, starts an underground needle exchange program. Trapped between his alcoholic pharmacist boss and his best friend, who is illegally trafficking Ritalin, a teenager learns empathy through Ms. Pacman and elder care homes. From the suburbs of Los Angeles to the countercultures of the Bay Area, the emotionally powerful, intricately woven stories in Two Californias explore the unexpected and unorthodox ways we come to terms with everyday tragedies.
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"Disturbing, tender, revelatory, and gorgeously expansive, Two Californias offers provocative pleasures even as it delivers us to the endless grief of desire, the bewildering repercussions of kindness, the terrible cost of unveiled devotion. Readers fierce enough to plunge to the depths of their own fears will be exhilarated by the emotional complexity, abiding humanity, and transcendent beauty of this eloquent collection."
--Melanie Rae Thon, author of The 7th Man
"The people inhabiting these stories are fully in their complex lives, yet they're rendered through a kind of hyper vivid language that makes their struggles seem hopeful just due to the great play of the words. What a rollickingly alive debut!"
--Aimee Bender, Author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"In Robert Glick's bravura collection -- in which, by way of ambiance, old-fashioned pencil sharpeners seem to turn in character's stomachs and four-pound postage scales are set to spin, by imagined overburden, upwards of 70 times -- sad boys hide in trunks and covered jacuzzis, grandmothers rise from the dead and mermaids on matte silver pedestals have their heads taken off with chainsaws. Two Californias is a fizzing, crackling, nightmarish wonderfest. I was in from the dusty oaks in the first paragraph to the rattlesnake in the last."
--Laird Hunt, author of Kind One and The Evening Road
