Two Nurses, Smoking: Stories

by David Means

Overview

Finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize

A new collection of stories by David Means, a visionary "master of the form" (The Observer).

Two nurses meet in the hospital parking lot to share a cigarette. They flirt and imagine a future together. They tell stories of patients lost and patients saved, of the darkest corners of human suffering and the luminous moments that break through, even here, in the shadow of death.

In David Means’s virtuosic new collection, time unfolds in unexpected ways: a single, quiet moment swells with the echoes of a widower’s complicated marriage; a dachshund, given a new name and a new life by a new owner, catches the scent of the troubled man who previously abandoned her; young lovers become old; estranged couples return to their vows; and those who have died live on in perpetuity in the memories of those whom they touched. The stories in this collection—which have won the O. Henry Prize and the Pushcart Prize, and have been featured in The Best American Short Stories—confirm the promise of a writer who “believes in the power of stories to rescue and redeem people” (Max Liu, Financial Times).

A revelatory meditation on trauma and catharsis, isolation and communion, Two Nurses, Smoking reflects the dislocations and anguish of our age, as well as the humanity and humor that buoy us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374606084
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/13/2022
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

David Means was born and raised in Michigan. He is the author of several short-story collections, including Instructions for a Funeral, The Spot (a New York Times notable book of the year), Assorted Fire Events (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction), and The Secret Goldfish, and of the novel Hystopia (long-listed for the Man Booker Prize). His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and other publications. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013, Means lives in Nyack, New York, and teaches at Vassar College.

Editorial Reviews

★ 2022-07-13
There’s nothing quite like a David Means story.

Jangly, elliptical, apparently autobiographical in some sense (but maybe not), his work functions like a series of Russian nesting dolls, one layer leading inexorably to the next. The 10 pieces in his sixth collection—he is also the author of the novel Hystopia (2016)—begin with small scenes, anecdotal encounters: the hospital workers in the title story, “somewhat lonely-looking figures, taking a smoke break, back behind a trailer, leaning toward each other as they talked softly beside a row of neatly trimmed bushes”; the man in the grief encounter group “who lost his teenage daughter two years ago, chasing after a Frisbee into the road.” Means is a genius of the fragment: Some of the narratives here include subtitled sections, a strategy that recalls “Two Ruminations on a Homeless Brother,” which appeared in Instructions for a Funeral (2019). But even those that don’t work this way build their effects incrementally, moving back and forth from the action to the reflective eye of the narrator, who bears a striking resemblance to the author himself. Means makes this clear from the opening story, “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog,” which he narrates from the perspective of a canine even as he acknowledges the challenges of doing so. “I wish I could make words be dog,” he writes, “…find the way to inhabit the true dynamic, to imagine a world not defined by notions of power, or morality, or memory, or sentiment, but instead by pure instinct.” What he’s addressing are the limitations of literature as well as its possibilities. This conundrum sits at the center of this remarkable set of stories, which seek to destabilize the illusions of fiction even as they embrace and heighten them. How does he do it? Let’s call it presence, both that of the characters and of the writer, whose language lives and grows by such an interplay. "Do your best to be as specific as possible while also bending around the truth so as to protect the living,” he implores in “The Depletion Prompts.”

These brilliant stories exist in the space between desire and complication.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 07/11/2022

Means (Instructions for a Funeral) explores the parameters of existence in his dazzling latest. In the title story, two nurses trade war stories over break—one’s about a doomed junkie dubbed Kidney Boy, another about a serial killer fellow nurse—and discover their capacity for love in each other. “Lightning Speaks!” is a hodgepodge of chatter centering on a teenage runaway adrift in the 1960s counterculture movement, while “The Red Dot” recalls the testament of a divorced man who regards the strange apparition of his water-averse ex-wife emerging from a river as a portent. “Stopping Distance” unspools from a bereavement support group, and “Vows” follows the second life of a marriage following a betrayal. In “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog,” a canine describes her memories and experiences while passing from one owner to another. The lovely closer, “The Depletion Prompts,” takes the form of a series of recursive writing prompts, an eminently teachable Barthian meditation that spells out Means’s interest in “the failure of language to reclaim pain,” as described in a prompt to write about the “strange dynamic between the past and the present.” Readers will revel in this robust collection. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Death, loss and the ravages of mental illness aren't the ingredients for light entertainment, but they make for a memorable reading experience in the exceptional story collection Two Nurses, Smoking by David Means.”
—Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Love does not end when the object of one’s affections disappears. How do we go on? How can we persevere? Such questions sit at the center of this beautiful and complicated book.”
—David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“Midway through the title story of his dazzling new collection, Two Nurses, Smoking, David Means suddenly reverses course on the tale you’ve been reading, about two soul-weary health care workers embarking on a tentative romance."
—Jess Walter, The New York Times

"Means explores the parameters of existence in his dazzling latest . . . Readers will revel in this robust collection. "
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"There’s nothing quite like a David Means story . . . Means is a genius of the fragment . . . [Two Nurses, Smoking is a] remarkable set of stories, which seek to destabilize the illusions of fiction even as they embrace and heighten them. How does he do it?"
—Kirkus (starred review)

“Two Nurses, Smoking is Means at his best — intelligent, often funny, always beautiful . . . This is a remarkable book not just about grief, but about the moments of brightness that punctuate it, making it both easier and, somehow, even more painful.”
—Michael Schaub, Star Tribune

“David Means taught many in my generation how to make the painfully idiosyncratic wonder of his short stories feel weighted like novels. In Two Nurse, Smoking, Means has offered us his most finely crafted, soulfully achy collection. No writer writes better about the gory gaps between folks who claim to love each other. Shockingly well written.”
—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: A Memoir

“David Means’s new stories are filled with sly wit and quiet brilliance. I left them feeling as if I’d traveled across vast territories of longing and loss led by an expert guide.”
—Jenny Offill, author of Weather

“The stories in Two Nurses, Smoking are classic David Means tales, told with brilliant and stylish precision.”
—Emma Cline, author of Daddy and The Girls

“Means is one of the most interesting short story writers working today, shining a light on the most intimate moments.”
—Emily Firetog, Literary Hub (Most Anticipated)

From the Publisher