White Dialogues, Paperback/Bennett Sims

With all the brilliance, bravado, and wit of his award-winning debut, A Questionable Shape , Bennett Sims returns with an equally ambitious and wide-ranging collection of stories. A house-sitter alone in a cabin in the woods comes to suspect that the cabin may need to be ``unghosted.`` A raconteur watches as his life story is rewritten on an episode of This American Life . And in the collection's title story, a Hitchcock scholar sitting in on a Vertigo lecture is gradually driven mad by his own theory of cinema. In these twelve stories, Sims moves from slow-burn psychological horror to playful comedy, bringing us into the minds of people who are haunted by their environments, obsessions, and doubts. Told in electric, insightful prose, White Dialogues is a profound exploration of the way we uncover meaning in a complex, and sometimes terrifying, world. It showcases Sims's rare talent and confirms his reputation as one of the most exciting young writers at work today.