The Miniature Wife · and Other Stories

**In the tradition of George Saunders and Aimee Bender, an exuberantly

imagined debut that chronicles an ordinary world marked by unusual phenomena.

**

The eighteen stories of Manuel Gonzales’s exhilarating first book render the

fantastic commonplace and the ordinary extraordinary, in prose that thrums

with energy and shimmers with beauty. In “The Artist’s Voice” we meet one of

the world’s foremost composers, a man who speaks through his ears. A hijacked

plane circles a city for twenty years in “Pilot, Copilot, Writer.” Sound can

kill in “The Sounds of Early Morning.” And, in the title story, a man is at

war with the wife he accidentally shrank. For these characters, the phenomenal

isn’t necessarily special—but it’s often dangerous.

In slightly fantastical settings, Gonzales illustrates very real guilt over

small and large marital missteps, the intense desire for the reinvention of

self, and the powerful urges we feel to defend and provide for the people we

love. With wit and insight, these stories subvert our expectations and

challenge us to look at our surroundings with fresh eyes. Brilliantly

conceived, strikingly original, and told with the narrative instinct of a born

storyteller, _The Miniature Wife_ is an unforgettable debut.