Where the Money Went: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

In these nine surprising stories about love and the desertion of love, a father contemplates his bank balance amid receipts for ski vacations; a real-estate agent tries to sell a house while his small son bites other children; and a widower, resigned to television for company, discovers the pleasures of life with another woman. In Kevin Canty's masterful collection, men convey the bitterness, tenderness, and humor of romantic relationships. Rarely is a man so revealing. From the Trade Paperback edition Kevin Canty is a master of the short story whose work has been compared to that of Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver. In Where the Money Went, he surprises us with stories about love and the desertion of love, all written from a man's point of view. Rarely is a man so revealing.A narrator struggles with his abiding loyalty to his ex-wife, even when he finds love with another woman. A newly divorced man learns more than he wants to know about his friends' long-term marriages. In these nine stories, which incisively touch on the complex nature of love, we find men as fathers, as husbands, and as lovers, trying their best in a world that stubbornly refuses to make sense. Canty, whose writing has been praised as "smart, gritty, unsentimental" (New York Times), "lovely and unforgiving" (Boston Globe), and "enchanting and painful" (USA Today), powerfully conveys both the bitterness that can afflict romantic relationships, and the moments of humor and tenderness that cut through it.