Adults and Other Children

by Miriam Cohen

Overview

An “acute portrayal of failed relationships and struggles to transcend social norms,”—New York Times Book Review (editor's choice)

“Readers can detect deadpan realism influences of Lorrie Moore and the feminism of Angela Carter in these stories, but the work is distinctly and originally Cohen's voice. . . . [The] plots and these characters will stay for a while. Make room for them."—PopMatters

"These shockingly insightful stories, riddled with breathtaking observation, are also, frequently, laugh out loud funny. Wisdom and hilarity are such a gorgeous couple, and Miriam Cohen makes the absolute most of this pairing. Evocative of Lorrie Moore at her sharpest best, Cohen's is still an entirely new and very welcome voice."—Robin Black, author of Life Drawing and If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

"In Adults and Other Children, Miriam Cohen renders the minds of children with such vivid intensity and imagination that I couldn’t help but see our world anew. The stories take us on a journey of familiar terrain—a daughter coming to terms with her parents’ divorce, sisters about to lose their mother, a new boy in school—in an unfamiliar and unflinchingly honest way, allowing us to better understand the messy and complicated relationships of our lives. Absorbing, magical, sinister and yet surprisingly sweet, I’ll be thinking of these stories for a long time."—Fatima Farheen Mirza

"In the weird and gorgeous tradition of Angela Carter and Kelly Link, Miriam Cohen has written a manifesto of postmodern womanhood. Her characters are hilariously neurotic, exquisitely self-diminishing, and yet grotesquely eloquent — perverse poets all, wandering the streets of New York or suffocating in the decorated living rooms of suburbia, trying their dire best to navigate life's labyrinths."—Josh Gaylord, author of When We We're Animals

"Adults & Other Children reimagines the Bildungsroman, as childhood clashes with adulthood to create a beautiful and terrifying emotional story. By stretching the misconceptions of children so thin and so wide, Miriam Cohen creates a glittering, transparent fabric through which we can finally read more clearly the myths that invent us."—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk

"A chilling view of womanhood—made up of lies, secrets, and fear—expressed in elegant prose."—Kirkus

Adults and Other Children follows four women as they navigate life from the confusion and innocence of childhood to the bizarre and darkly humorous complexities of adulthood. Along the way, we meet a vindictive, and imaginary, nanny, who casts doubts about the true identity of a little girl's new baby sister; A group of friends who spend their time obsessing over the gory details of a spate of recent crimes; A college professor who has her boss fired over an imagined sexual assault; and a Jewish woman who feigns ignorance in her religion, hoping to endear herself to an Orthodox widower. Time and again, the girls and women in this riveting debut collection fantasize and deceive to get what they want―or what they think they want―while we find ourselves drawn to their often surprising and all too human behavior.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632460998
Publisher:	Ig Publishing
Publication date:	01/21/2020
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Miriam Cohen's work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Black Warrior Review, StoryQuarterly, West Branch Wired, Cream City Review, The Florida Review, DIAGRAM, Carve Magazine, Cimarron Review, The Collagist, Bennington Review, Joyland, Fugue, Hobart, Image and Witness. The recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

…curious, sometimes very dark—and often delightful. Cohen's greatest strength is in her realism…Behind the characters' transgressions is an acute portrayal of failed relationships and communication, of what is expected of women and how they struggle to transcend the norms that require them to achieve certain things (a husband, first and foremost) in order to be relevant.

The New York Times Book Review - Maya Chung

2019-10-28
While the girls and women who inhabit Cohen's 14 stories share tangential relationships, what most binds this collection together is a sense of overpowering dread.

"Naughty," about a little girl named Amelia who's convinced her infant sister is a changeling, sets the horror-story tone for what follows. Nothing supernatural, or exactly murderous, happens, but the emotional menace swirling under the characters' skins continually threatens to erupt—and sometimes does—into public chaos. So in "Bad Words," second grader Yael reacts to her Orthodox Jewish parents' impending divorce with a taboo dinner request, fully aware that "eating a cheeseburger is the same thing as killing someone." By "A Girl of a Certain Age," Yael has grown into a young woman fascinated by the murder of a co-worker by her seemingly normal fiance. In "Guns Are Safer for Children Than Laundry Detergent," she creates an imaginary child with her boyfriend to avoid having a real baby. College student Sophie, who is Amelia's former classmate and Yael's future roommate, becomes the surrogate mother for a creepy professor and his wife in "Surrogate"; years later, in "Odd Goods," she accuses another creepy academic of sexual harassment, exaggerating the details if not the truth. Meanwhile, Amelia reaches adolescence with a serious eating disorder. In "Expecting," she's described as "more virus than girl" by the teacher whose life spirals into lies after she and Amelia catch each other puking in the bathroom. Cohen's girls and women are damaged but not evil. Addicted to small lies and thievery, Amelia's sister, Karin, is also drawn to protecting others: a sometime classmate "allergic to the sun" in "Recess Brides"; a severely disabled child in "Old for Your Age, Tall for Your Height"; and skeletal Amelia in "Care." Years later, in "Wife," Karin has an epiphany: "She wasn't going to be a filthy whore. It was a terrible thing to realize, that she actually was what everyone took her for: wife, mother, schoolteacher." Being ordinary is what scares these troubled women most.

A chilling view of womanhood—made up of lies, secrets, and fear—expressed in elegant prose.

Kirkus Reviews