These stories are mesmerizing, sensual (and often wonderfully sexual), beautifully imagined tales that lead us from the familiar to the intimately strange. Richmond writes as if she lives comfortably in this world and another dreamy, concurrent dimension that is achingly just beyond our ken.
Hum
Michelle Richmond
Winner of the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize
Thirteen years after the publication of her first story collection, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, New York Times–bestselling author Michelle Richmond returns with Hum, a collection of ten stories that examine love, lust, and loyalty from surprising angles. In “Hum” a young couple that is paid to live in a house filled with surveillance equipment becomes “quietly lost to each other.” In “Medicine,” a woman grieving over the death of her sister finds her calling as a manual medical caregiver. In “Boulevard,” a couple who has been trying to have a child for seven years finds themselves in an unnamed country at the height of a revolution, summoned there by the enigmatic H.
Michelle Richmond’s extraordinary imagination leads readers into grounded yet fantastic worlds in which men walk on water, a woman marries a scaled sea creature, and couples take journeys that mirror their interior life. Richmond writes elegantly and convincingly from the point of view of either gender — a feat unto itself. And her characters — ranging from a lawyer who defends murderers, to enigmatic diplomats — reveal her wide and expansive mind. Hum is a collection not to be missed.