Russian Lover
and Other Stories
An apprentice dominatrix suddenly loses her grip, a spurned wife attempts to explain her husband's flaws to his mother, a stripper turns the tables on a jeering customer . . .
Jana Martin's smart, vulnerable heroines respond to life's curveballs with guts and flair. In luminous prose she deftly plumbs the depths of their troubles—and shows the often startling ways in which they dig themselves out.
A dazzling collection of 15 stories by an author who revels in playing with form, from epistolary to prose poem to sweeping narrative. Short fiction that packs a punch but never loses the heartbeat.
Praise for Russian Lover and Other Stories
"Jana Martin's story collection is a force of contemporary nature."
— BUST Magazine"Martin writes beautiful, jagged sentences and experiments with form … She reshapes well-worn topics of addiction and infidelity into fresh grooves, with strong-willed female characters proud of their appetites and desires, and stories that steer into glorious side trips."
— Toronto Star"Jana Martin's sentences have a beauty and bite and a rhythm all their own. These are tough, funny stories from a writer wise enough to know that wisdom doesn't always come with experience. Russian Lover won't teach you much about Russia, but it will give you some exhilaratingly painful portrait of people trying to love."
— Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask and Home Land"There's an elegant, flaring strength to Russian Lover, a precision of language that is daring and unique in the way it touches memory. Martin's stories are cocoons spun tightly around an elusive, idiopathic emotional core — always intriguing, they give life to the tired mind."
— Lydia Millet, author of Atavists and A Children's Bible