Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson

A debut short story collection in the tradition of writers like Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, and George Saunders--strange, imaginative, and refreshingly original--now back in print as part of Ecco's "Art of the Story" Series, and with a new introduction from the author

Kevin Wilson's characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. "Grand Stand-In" is narrated by an employee of the Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider--a company that supplies "stand-ins" for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in "Blowing Up On the Spot," a story singled out by Ann Patchett for Ploughshares, a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted.

Southern gothic at its best, laced with humor and pathos, these wonderfully inventive stories explore the relationship between loss and death and the many ways we try to cope with both.

Kevin Wilson is the author of the novels The Family Fang, which was converted into an acclaimed film starring Nicole Kidman, and Perfect Little World, as well as the story collections Tunneling to the Core of the Earth, which won the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. With his wife and two sons, he resides in Sewanee, Tennessee.