I Want to Show You More: Stories

by Jamie Quatro

“Passionate, sensuous, savagely intense, and remarkable . . . Moves between carnality and spirit like some franker, modernized Flannery O’Connor.”—James Wood, The New Yorker

“An obsessive first collection that feels like a fifth or sixth. . . . Strange, thrilling, and disarmingly honest.”—J. Robert Lennon, The New York Times Book Review

Sharp-edged and fearless, mixing white-hot yearning with daring humor, Quatro’s stories upend and shake out our views on infidelity, faith, and family.

Set around Lookout Mountain on the border of Georgia and Tennessee, Quatro’s hypnotically revealing stories range from the traditional to the fabulist as they expose lives torn between spirituality and sexuality in the New American South. These fifteen linked tales confront readers with fractured marriages, mercurial temptations, and dark theological complexities, and establish a sultry and enticingly cool new voice in American fiction.

Caught up
Decomposition : a primer for promiscuous housewives
Ladies and gentlemen of the pavement
Here
What friends talk about
1.7 to Tennessee
The anointing
Imperfections
You look like Jesus
Better to lose an eye
Georgia the whole time
Sinkhole
Demolition
Holy ground
Relatives of God

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Southern, Religion, Short Story Collection, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

206 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2013

About the author

Jamie Quatro’s debut novel, FIRE SERMON (Grove, Jan 2018) is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and an Indie Next pick for spring 2018. Her 2013 collection I WANT TO SHOW YOU MORE was a New York Times Notable Book, NPR Best Book of 2013, Indie Next pick, O, The Oprah Magazine Summer Reading pick, and New York Times Editors’ Choice. The collection was named a Top 10 Book of 2013 by Dwight Garner in the New York Times and a Favorite Book of 2013 by James Wood in The New Yorker, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize.

Quatro’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s, Vice, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. Her stories are anthologized in the O.Henry Prize Stories 2013, Ann Charters' The Story and Its Writer, and the 2018 Pushcart Prize Anthology. A contributing editor at Oxford American magazine, Quatro teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program, and lives with her family in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.

Reviews

[Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

'See Rock City for (Shy) My Titties'
[excellent subtitle for this collection*]

Love lasts. It's lust that moves out on us when we're not looking, it's lust which always skips town--and love without lust just isn't enough.
Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

Variations on the dirty mind and talk of a married woman around 40 in her sexual-peak-unsatisfied, transplanted to Chattanooga, TN, living on Lookout Mountain. She has many and varied emotional affairs and the stories brim with: a fit, middle-aged woman, a keyboard or phone, her finger, and kinky-dirty talk.



*Most anyone growing up in the Southeastern U.S. recalls, probably up through the 1980s, all the black "See Rock City" signs on red barns along highways and interstates within 200 miles and heading in the direction of Chattanooga, with its looming Lookout Mountain at the top of which lies Rock City.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading and loving Quatro's more recently published novel, Fire Sermon, I was eager to read more of her work. This book of short stories is it! Read so close to the novel is probably the way to do it, because surely half the stories are about the same two people that the novel is about. I'm guessing this is something close to something that happened to the author and she has been writing about it ever since, packaging it as fiction. So some of these stories add on to the novel, actually, and are a nice companion.

Otherwise there are a few stories that dabble in fantasy/absurd elements - I didn't love these, especially didn't understand the runners with statues. Most memorable is probably the story of the older woman trying to mail a letter to the president.

Every story is set on Lookout Mtn. the area that crosses the border of Georgia and Tennessee. I wish I'd known about this book when I went there at the end of November as the place matters more in these stories than in the one book I found to read there.

Really more like 3.5 stars.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adultery, religion, death, pain, the grotesque, and obsessions. Reviews in the NY Times and The New Yorker, blurbs from David Means, David Gates, Tom Bissell, Sven Birkerts, etc. James Wood caught tones of Flannery O'Connor (the grotesque) and Lydia Davis (the flash fiction-ish stories); Dwight Garner focused on Quatro's sexual themes and suggested a comparison to Donald Barthelme in her allegories. Myself I detected the influence of George Saunders, especially in the story about the marathon runners carrying the statues, and the dead body-in-the-bed story. (I just Googled Jamie Quatro + George Saunders to confirm that I'm not the only one to see that.) I think she's just really good no matter whom she's drawing from. I didn't really "like" those two stories I just mentioned - they were unsettling in their subject matter and sort of unsatisfying in their elliptical-ness (these aren't novel-like Alice Munro stories or densely worded Jim Shepard stories). But Quatro's sensibility/worldview is interesting, erotic, dark, different.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wife returns home to her husband to find her lover's decomposing body on their bed. Runners in a special race must carry phallic statues or face punishment. A boy with a rare condition uses a girl with cancer to cure himself. A married wife and a married man have a lot of dirty, secret phone sex together, except not with their respective spouses.

Dark, gritty, and erotic, Quatro's collection I Want to Show You More will interest those who want to read about infidelity, religion, and running. Half of her stories, such as Georgia the Whole Time and Better to Lose an Eye, stick with realism and explore family tensions. The other half, ranging from Ladies and Gentlemen of the Pavement to Demolition, move more in the direction of magical realism.

While not my favorite collection of short stories, I feel glad that I can say I started my 2015 off with an ensemble that features people running around with genitalia, as well as a heartfelt and honest portrayal of grief. Quatro displays her versatility in I Want to Show You More, and I look forward to reading more of her writing.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What if life is just some hard equation
on a chalkboard in a science class for ghosts?"

Lyric by Silver Jews


Lookout Mountain, Georgia is on my map, sharing latitude and longitude with other ghost towns, the places readers return to over and over if they are brave, hunting themselves down among the pages. (My Grove Press copy is appropriately printed on rough edged pages).

The stories are unforgettable, the kind that reduce you to heart and lungs, breath and beat and then reader adrenaline peaks and you are the best you: inspired and trying to keep up.

The stories generously invite you to belong -

I was the runner, Whistler Jim, the brass band playing Dixie and the race itself in 'ladies & gentleman of the pavement'

I was 89 year old Eva Bock on her long walk, the crushed violas and the sharp blind curve. The letter. The golden retriever named Pearl.

The Gesture over the Sinkhole, the decomposing fantasy abandoned in the basement, Wren, Wren, Wren.

Let Jamie Quatro show you more, all I can offer is my wholehearted praise and recommendation that you check in with your ghosts, decompose your fantasies and run faster and longer than they say you can.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's at once a horrifying yet darkly humorous take on marriage, family and infidelity set in Western Georgia and the Deep South, of yearnings and of desires centered around quirky trappings. Reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor and elements of the Southern Grotesque, it also is a touching meditation on love.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in a reading slump, but this book pulled me out of it. It's a quick read, but not lightweight.

Many of the stories are interconnected, and that story was really beautifully done. I didn't wish it was told more chronologically or was simply a novel; instead I enjoyed reading the different pieces of it as they came. Actually, I liked it so much, I *do* wish I could read it as a novel, but I think it worked quite well as it was.

Several of the stories introduce more fantastic elements: a married couple returns home to find the wife's lover dead in their bed--but it is a wax statue that is decomposing that they are dealing with; a tale of marathon runners who mysteriously receive sculpture they must carry with them as they run; and "Demolition," the story of the transformation of a church, is a beautiful experiment in magical realism.

The language is elegant and concise. Even in stories that use narrative techniques I normally don't care for (second person narration, or first person plural), I didn't find those techniques distracting.

[Rebecca]

I read the first two stories, a total of 18 pages. “Decomposition,” about a woman’s lover magically becoming a physical as well as emotional weight on her and her marriage, has an interesting structure as well as second-person narration, but I fear the collection as a whole will just be a one-note treatment of a woman’s obsession with her affair. The same goes for Fire Sermon, which I’m taking off my TBR.

[Elizabeth A · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a fan of the short story, as they often feel rushed and ultimately not satisfying to me. You probably already know this about me, and were wondering why I picked up yet another collection.

So imagine my delight when I started this book, and found myself having to slow down to stop from binge reading it in one sitting. These interlocking stories explore God, sex, religion, faith, love, infidelity, parenting, aging, loss, running, well, the human condition really, albeit a privileged one. Sure, some stories are stronger than others, but each and every one had me pause somewhere in the reading, and re-read a line or two. The juxtaposition of the surreal with the horribly realistic is so well done, and the honesty of the writing is such a breath of fresh air.

Here is my advice if you decide to read it: Do not read it all in one sitting. Stay soft while reading this collection. Remind yourself that we are all human, and fallible, and doing the best we can. Can you read these stories without being judgy? Try it and let me know.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books I should like, but I don't, and then I feel dumb because perhaps the reason I don't like it is because I don't understand it and if I were smarter I would like it. I don't enjoy that and I didn't enjoy this collection - it didn't resonate with me.

[Paul Blaschko · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. Quatro mixes surreal and fabulist elements with sharp and illuminating details about everyday life to create a collection of compelling stories that challenge us to think about the stories that we tell ourselves each day. Her characters are reliably unpredictable in their modest desperation. Many of the stories tell the stories of characters attempting to reconcile modern secularity with the surreal stories with which they have been raised, and the powerful, earnest, disquietude this creates.

To illustrate: running throughout the collection is a narrative about a tired housewife who is having an online affair with a man halfway across the country. Some of the stories carrying this narrative are straightforward realist narratives, stories about having sexually explicit conversations with this man on a cell phone while her children attend piano lessons in the same room. Other of these stories, though, are powerfully and emotionally complex -- it is as if these have taken on the delusions of their narrator, and they refuse to admit any dissonance between the ongoing affair, and the dishonesty that continues to grow between this character and her faithful and patient husband. Yet another story carrying the thread of this narrative depicts the time just after the affair has been revealed and has ended. In this story, the main character and her husband arrive home to discover a corpse in their bed. She grieves over it and tries to find ways to pay it proper respects, while he -- the husband -- continues to insist in frustration that the corpse is merely made of wax; it's not real and never has been.

Now, this description might make it sound as if Quatro sometimes falls back into obvious allegory or extended narrative metaphor -- but that's not quite it. There is nothing obvious about these stories. Each of them evades simple interpretation, and even the most extremely fabulist stories fight to complicate these metaphors.

Really solid collection. I love, love, love it!

[Sue Bridehead (A Pseudonym) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this off-beat interconnected selection of short stories. I liked the way it's rooted in two places (Lookout Mountain, GA/TN and Phoenix, AZ). I like that it deals with issues of faith, which you don't see too much in contemporary short fiction. I like that characters recur but you're not 100% certain they're recurring at first, because they have no names and the only things that keep coming around again are a sexless affair and a number of children. I like that there are a few stories that seem to come out of left field, but seem thematically related (for example, they deal with death, or guilt, or running).

Overall, it's a great example of a unique voice rooted in a particular background (educated Southern Christian with doubts about sin/belief).

A day after finishing this, one story keeps bouncing around in my mind, and it's perhaps the most allegorical one, about a woman running a marathon with a statue tied to her back. I can't stop trying to riddle out what it all means.

In the entire collection, I feel there's one false note. I didn't like the second-to-last story, where a woman runs down a mountain and finds refuge in a halfway house, where she longs to move in and be accepted and supported by people with mental illness, violent home lives, and non-white skin. Really? I felt that this yearning in the character should have been more fully explored. It's an uncomfortable notion, the idea that one would "descend" to one's lowest point and flee one's family, only to find refuge in the care and attentions of people who have it far worse (people of color, people from violent households, people with mental illness). I get what she was going for, I think, but I didn't feel great about how she handled it. It irks me when characters get their unearned epiphanies from interactions with people outside the mainstream.

Still, that one story didn't detract too much. Overall it's a very interesting and unique collection.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I thought this collection of short stories was over-done. But when I read, "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Pavement," I was transported into a modern day, "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson. Then, upon reading, "Here," I experienced a touch of tenderness through grief along the underbelly of a family's life force.

At once both familiar and strikingly unique, Quatro has the deft skill of a magician with words, creating both truth and illusion.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 This is a grouping of interlocking stories, that highlight many of the things women long for, and give them a surreal bent. Also takes in consideration many of the things men think are important and that women don't place quite the same emphasis or value. Utterly distinctive, some actually made me a bit uncomfortable and some I couldn't quite understand, but I love reading something I wouldn't normally pick up. New and different. ARC from NetGalley.com

[Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading this book made me feel like I do while watching most French films or modern dance performances: Like I am supposed to grasp some deeper and brilliant meaning intended by the artist but am really not getting it at all. I made it through about half of these stories until I finally quit trying. Some books are delightfully bizarre; others are irritatingly bizarre and feel as if the authors are trying way too hard to be obscure. This book is the latter.

[Jane Ciabattari · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of this winter's most transporting short story collections. Here's my review in The Daily Beast:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...

Happy groundhog day!

Jane
www.janeciabattari.com

[Alan Heathcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Time and time again, these stories set my brain on fire. They changed the way I see the world. That's maybe the biggest compliment I can give--they changed the way I see the world. Jamie Quatro is a major talent.

[Bart · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are times when Jamie Quatro's stories strike you square with their originality and make you hopeful about the subjects she will discover as you read further along, and she chooses the subjects for such discovery - infidelity, cancer, Christianity and physical fatigue (brought on by distance running) - but she never quite gets there, never quite fulfills the promise of depth her subjects anticipate, not unlike the infidelity she depicts, infidelity that never goes beyond phone-sex.

Every affair is a happening of texting and deep breathing and emailed photos, an affair the spouse invariably reacts to with exaggerated injury, in the tradition of a 17-year-old boy learning his high-school girlfriend kissed someone else - and maybe even did more! - at a party last spring. The betrayals Quatro depicts are earnest and immature and, were it not for her decided talent at creating a context for them in the elegance of her prose, a bit silly, too.

Quatro brings this same depth of inquiry to religious faith and what can be accomplished with distance running. She depicts brutally, and appropriately, the shallow fanaticism of Southern religiosity and the American evangelical tradition - though perhaps more brutally and more tellingly than she knows.

She asks very interesting questions about cancer, however, questions that raise themselves merely with how ubiquitous of a theme cancer has become in the American narrative, a ubiquitousness Quatro loyally reports.

Most of the stories in I Want to Show You More are secondary-school subjects explored by a talented adult. That is the very reverse, and the very blessed reverse, of what most American short-fiction now offers its readers.

[Diane Kistner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot get the story, "1.7 to Tennessee," out of my mind. I have ached for days after reading it. How often does that happen with a work of fiction? The last time a story moved me so strongly was when I first read Kafka's "The Metamorphosis"; I couldn't stop crying, and I cry every time I read it again. Jamie Quatro's story of the old woman with failing faculties walking to the post office to deliver a letter to George W. Bush protesting the war, and his response, is too powerful for words.

Quatro's work does remind me of Kafka. Certainly some of the settings and scenes are Kafkaesque, even if they are set near Lookout Mountain, Tennessee and Georgia. But she has her own voice (already!) and a way of involving the reader in a collaborative story-telling effort—like the best flash fiction does—as she teases us into our own imaginings even as she masterfully shapes the narrative.

Speaking of flash fiction, some of the stories are very short, as is true of flash, but some are longer. The stories all stand on their own but also reverberate across the entire collection. There is a very big small community in these pages, and it will surprise you. Definitely highly recommended reading.

[Lindsay Deutsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamie Quatro confronts morality, love and religion in the contemporary American South in her debut short story collection. It's dark, bizarre and highly sexual. Many of the linked stories, all set around Lookout Mountain on the border of Georgia and Tennessee, are loosely focused on a woman and her unconsummated online affair. In "Decomposition," a wife wakes up to find her lover's corpse in her bed, while her husband tries to convince her it's just wax. In another, she confesses the relationship to her mother. Other stories focus on guilt and perception. In "Better to Lose an Eye," an embarrassed girl is forced to attend a pool party with her quadriplegic mother. "Sinkhole" is narrated by a boy who thinks he has a literal sinkhole in his chest. Some stories are uncomfortable, pushing the limit with their sheer oddity and disregard for social norms. But isn't that the point?
(Posted on usatoday.com)

[Cassidy Quimby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. What powerful, strange, raw, emotional stories. I haven't been able to stop thinking about the previous ones as I moved through the book. These are the type of stories that hang out in your mind with the hope of decoding the meanings.

There should be a disclaimer on the cover: not for anyone currently depressed!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author has a very fresh way of writing to me. She doesn't exactly come out and say it in mere conclusions. She delivers a shock that runs through your system when you realize what it is that you think she is saying.

The coolest thing to me about this collection was how loosely connected various stories are. This also caused her to receive much negative critique in other reviews I read. This tells me that her way of writing is not for everyone!

I rate this book 4 rather than 5 stars because some of the stories just weren't enough for me. I turned the page and found it was already ending and I thought "that's IT."

[Aseem Kaul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit I was expecting more from this collection, given all the glowing reviews I'd read. Ms. Quatro's seemingly endless obsession with adultery left me impatient, and her take on it frequently banal and uninteresting. There's material here for one really good short story about adultery, but spread over six stories there just isn't enough to hold my interest. And some of the other stories - '1.7 to Tennessee', 'Sinkhole' - were clear misfires, while others ('Better to Lose an Eye') amounted to little more than a good anecdote stretched out to story length.

The one bright spot for me in this collection was 'Georgia The Whole Time' - a perfect gem of a story that I went back and read again just to savor its clear-eyed yet poignant brilliance. There were other stories in I Want to Show You More that I enjoyed - 'Demolition', 'Here' - but 'Georgia the Whole Time' is the only reason I might consider reading Ms. Quatro's next collection.

[Justine · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are stories in this book that took my breath away. I love the mixture of real life and surreal, the things we imagine, and the moments we come back to over and over in our heads. I thought the stories in the beginning had more impact than the later stories but Quatro captures the essence of people, grief and loss, the things important to each person, and the things that capture our heart even when we know they are wrong.

Quatro also writes beautifully the elements of infidelity, the desire and confusion of such realtionships. As a marathoner, I loved the pieces about running, especially the second story about the marathon runners and their statutes. That story is definitely a must read for any runner.

I highly recommend the first 3/4 of the book, there are some intersecting lines and characters so it's worth a read.

[Tammy White · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was startling and disturbing, but quite passionate and very intriguing. For me, personally, I am too sensitive for this type of genre. But in the format of short stories, it was just right. Pushed me to consider from about a hundred new angles. I found myself wondering, the entire time, "Wow! This author! She is something! How on earth did she fathom these stories?!" She (Jamie Quatro) is obviously talented as a writer, sensitive and intelligent. I will be curious and interested to read what she has out next. Like I said, though this is not my chosen genre, I was impressed(and I mean floored) by Jamie's skill as a writer.

[Stacey D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are mainly a blend of religion, sex, infidelity, sadness and running. A little too much religious fervor for my taste, but I enjoyed the setting of Lookout Mountain, Ga/Tn and the pace of these stories most of all. Quatro uses a mix of realistic fiction and magical realism throughout this collection, which was a little jarring, but surprisingly welcome. Some of the characters and plots from one story emerged in other stories later on, too, like Jocelyn, Grady and Myra crossing paths with Eva Bock in "1.7 to Tennessee". I liked that. Not surprisingly, "1.7..." and "Here" were my favorites.

[Adele · Rating 4 out of 5]

An evocative collection of short fiction. There are several linked/interconnected stories. I liked some "storylines" better than others (for example, "Here" and "Georgia the Whole Time" were two of my favourites). And, as with any collection, some stories just generally stuck with me more than others. But overall this was a solid collection that has much to teach any writer--especially those writing about religious communities and grappling with mysteries of faith. The blend of surreal, fabulist elements with traditional fiction was especially inspiring.

[Darla · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite stories were "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Pavement" (a metaphor of the gospel with a marathon theme), "Here" (dealing with the experience of the spouse left behind to raise the family when their better half has died of cancer) and "1.7 to Tennessee" (about an old woman walking to the post office). There other themes throughout dealing with the realities of infidelity and for that reason, I caution readers not to pick up this volume if they prefer not to read about such things. Her writing reminds me of Gillian Flynn of "Gone, Girl", "Sharp Objects" and "Dark Places".

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more than I did. She obviously has some great influences (and teachers) but this collection ultimately seems unfocused and messy. I really liked the affair stories and the weird story about the marathon runners as well as "Better To Lose an Eye" and "Georgia the Whole Time." A lot of the church-related stuff just didn't pull me in for some reason. I'd be willing to bet (or I hope) that her next book packs a harder, more consistent wallop.

[Carla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book of short stories that I was anxiously awaiting to read, led me to some more disappointment. Most were okay, but the adult phone/sex/adultery theme was far too frequent, as well as stories that focused on religion. I only really enjoyed one or two of the stories, the rest left me feeling they were "fillers". Certainly Quatro is an accomplished writer, her prose straight-forward and elegant, but too repetitive.

[Veronika Pizano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Takmer kazda poviedka ma v sebe urcity nerealny prvok. Kym pri niektorych poviedkach som symboliku aspon nejak neuchopitelne chapala (mrtvola milenca v dome), pri niektorych mi to uplne unikalo (priehlbina v hrudi) a nedokazala som sa preto na text naladit. V celkovom dojme preto len hodnotenie 3, aj ked sa najdu poviedky aj za 5.