Among the vanguard of American literary writers, Lynne Tillman’s work has defied categorization throughout her career—a body of work that both redefined and reimagined the short story form entirely.
Curated by the author, Thrilled to Death is the entry point for both established fans and new readers alike. These selected stories collect an ensemble of Tillman’s Borgesian fictions that span decades and traverse themes of sex, death, memory, and anxiety.
Lynne Tillman is an emissary from a vanishing literary culture ... Tillman’s style is spare and spiky ... In an era of truncated attention spans, her short stories, some verging on micro, seem newly with-it. Her one-liners can do more than certain entire volumes.
The pieces...tend to begin abruptly and end in a screeching halt, where you stumble out, a little dizzy, wondering what just happened ... Tillman’s stories are told. They’re dominated by the narrator’s insistent voice, which sometimes feels like all it needs is a premise and a few accompanying details ... These short-short stories don’t leave you much time to catch your breath ... A good book of selected stories should feel like a cabinet of wonders and curiosities, where you get to experience the writer’s full range of interests and obsessions: quirky one-offs and virtuosic pieces that capture a whole world in a few pages. Thrilled to Death has all those qualities.
