Why Men Are Afraid of Women: Stories

by Francois Camoin

Overview

The tie that binds men and women, that makes men do absurd things that they will very likely be sorry for later, is at the center of this prize-winning collection of stories.

There is, for example, Jack Segal, who is thirty-six and who owns a record store on Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica and who has fallen in love—badly and madly in love—with the fourteen-yearold daughter of his friend Katzman. Segal can’t think. He eats, but it doesn’t taste like anything. He drives the freeways, floats above the city lights, and finds himself almost wishing that the Great Quake would come and solve everything for him.

Some of Camoin’s characters are running: Diehl, from the necessity of finishing his second novel, of deciding once and for all the fate of its central character, who may be Diehl himself; the jogger-narrator of the story “Peacock Blue,” from the pain of his life (“What lucky fools marathon runners are. They run for joy.”); Loveman, to El Paso and a hustler’s dream of paradise that turns into something else.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820345895
Publisher:	Wormsloe Foundation Nature Books
Publication date:	03/01/2013
Series:	Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction Series , #95
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	164
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

FRANCOIS CAMOIN is the retired director of the creative writing program at the University of Utah. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Playboy, the Mid-American Review, the Missouri Review, and Nimrod, among other publications. Camoin has received the Associated Writing Program’s Award for Fiction and the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Artist Award. He is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction including, most recently, the story collection April, May, and So On.

Table of Contents

Miami

It Could Happen

Peacock Blue

Diehl: The Wandering Years

A Special Case

Home Is the Blue Moon Cafe

The Amelia Barons

A Hunk of Burning Love

La Vida

Cheerful Wisdom

Sometimes the Wrong Thing Is the Right Thing

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Should be applauded by everyone who reads or writes short fiction.”—Kenyon Review

“The men in Camoin’s stories are believable as they struggle awkwardly to relate to wives, girlfriends, little girls. . . . Fine examples of short fiction by [a] gifted author.”—Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

Should be applauded by everyone who reads or writes short fiction.

Kenyon Review

“Should be applauded by everyone who reads or writes short fiction.”—Kenyon Review

“The men in Camoin’s stories are believable as they struggle awkwardly to relate to wives, girlfriends, little girls. . . . Fine examples of short fiction by [a] gifted author.”—Library Journal

From the Publisher