"Kate Braverman is a writer of astonishing versatility and lyricism. Her stories are brilliantly rendered, painfully intimate portraits of individuals who come alive on the page as if illuminated by strobe lighting. With remarkable precision she tracks the restless motions of a mind searching for its reflection in the world--a continuous interrogation of the self that sweeps us along with it, as in a mysterious adventure."--Joyce Carol Oates
"This extraordinary collection from Braverman features unforgettable stories of women on the edge, children overlooked, and men at the ends of their ropes. . . . Her details are so vivid that they feel like memories . . . Without glorifying or reveling in suffering, Braverman reveals the inner lives of her disparate cast of characters."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Kate Braverman is an original. Reading her is like hitching a ride on a runaway train, always dangerous, always thrilling, always a knockout. Seppuku is all that and more."--Frederick Barthelme, author of There Must Be Some Mistake
"Braverman is the godmother of literary bad girls and a connoisseur of the shattered beauty glittering in the wreckage of her characters' lives. A Good Day for Seppuku celebrates the Braverman vision, and frames her legacy."--Janet Fitch, author of The Revolution of Marina M.
"There is . . . a captivating undertone of dark humor to Braverman's stories, whether it comes through description, interior narrative, or sharply bandied dialogue."--Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews
A thirteen-year-old girl must choose between her mother in Beverly Hills or her pot-growing father in the Allegheny Mountains. Dr. Bernie Roth and his wife Chloe reside in a grand hacienda in La Jolla. Their children are in college, and their disappointments are profound. But Bernie has his doctor's bag of elixirs for the regrets of late middle age. Mrs. Barbara Stein, a high school teacher, looks like she'd sacrifice her life for Emily Dickinson's honor. That's camouflage—Mrs. Stein actually spends summers in the Sisyphean search for her prostitute daughter in Los Angeles.
These are some of the tales told in Kate Braverman's audacious new story collection. These furious and often hilarious tableaus of American family life remind us of why she has been seducing readers ever since her debut novel Lithium for Medea shook the literary world nearly forty years ago.
"Braverman possesses a magical, incantatory voice and the ability to lift ordinary lives into the heightened world of myth."—New York Times
Kate Braverman is the author of a memoir, four novels, two story collections, and four books of poetry. She is the recipient of the Economist Prize, an Isherwood Fellowship, and the O'Henry Award. Her classic short fiction has appeared in Ben Marcus's New American Short Stories, Tobias Wolfe's The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, McSweeney's, Best American, Carver, The Paris Review, and numerous esteemed anthologies and award-winning collections. She lives in the Bay Area.
