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Day Care: Stories
From award-winning author Nora Lange comes a ransacking of the house of motherhood and matrimony.
Nora Lange’s debut novel, Us Fools, was praised as the “Great American Novel” by Molly Young in The New York Times, and “a razor-sharp critique of American capitalism” by Michael Schaub at NPR. Now, she turns her eye toward the daily exercise of getting by.
In “Heart Beats,” Carol and David arrive late to a Boston dinner party for a night of “messy socializing” with other couples, including a former cult-leader turned financial-advisor and a woman who learned of a “kinky sort of game” while riding public transit, details that she will reveal after the peach crumble. In “Island of Phaetons,” an expatriate living in Istanbul is called away from her daily life with “the husband” and “the friend who wanted more than friendship” to visit her mother, who notoriously makes bad decisions, and who has just arrived in Greece “with news” for her daughter, a tantalizing invitation that has her daughter immediately on a plane. In “Dog Star,” two figurines live out their dreams before succumbing to the truth that they have been assembled inside of a snow globe and will never go anywhere. In the title story, a new mother in Los Angeles navigates a job, a long-distance relationship with her husband, and her visiting mother, while hoping to find relief in daytime app sex.
These stories of lust, estrangement, and self-preservation are at once hilarious and savage. Day Care is a biting reflection on economic precarity, love, and peeing your pants.
Nora Lange’s debut novel, Us Fools, was praised as the “Great American Novel” by Molly Young in The New York Times, and “a razor-sharp critique of American capitalism” by Michael Schaub at NPR. Now, she turns her eye toward the daily exercise of getting by.
In “Heart Beats,” Carol and David arrive late to a Boston dinner party for a night of “messy socializing” with other couples, including a former cult-leader turned financial-advisor and a woman who learned of a “kinky sort of game” while riding public transit, details that she will reveal after the peach crumble. In “Island of Phaetons,” an expatriate living in Istanbul is called away from her daily life with “the husband” and “the friend who wanted more than friendship” to visit her mother, who notoriously makes bad decisions, and who has just arrived in Greece “with news” for her daughter, a tantalizing invitation that has her daughter immediately on a plane. In “Dog Star,” two figurines live out their dreams before succumbing to the truth that they have been assembled inside of a snow globe and will never go anywhere. In the title story, a new mother in Los Angeles navigates a job, a long-distance relationship with her husband, and her visiting mother, while hoping to find relief in daytime app sex.
These stories of lust, estrangement, and self-preservation are at once hilarious and savage. Day Care is a biting reflection on economic precarity, love, and peeing your pants.
- GenresShort Stories
216 pages, Paperback
Published April 7, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 25, 2026
There’s a lot to admire here: short stories that favor sexual tension over plot and ambiguity over resolution. I love the way Lange links her stories with signs and symbols to suggest the faintest of continuities. Who needs a shared universe of characters and settings when a banana will do the trick?
April 23, 2026
There is no one more free or more brilliant than Nora Lange.
April 17, 2026
Nora Lange is a stunning writer. These stories are beautifully written and I do see some of the uncanny strangeness of Joy Williams here. A brave voice. Everyone should read Nora Lange.
May 16, 2026
This is not a Jenny Offill.
I guess I’d hoped it would be?
Not for me.
I guess I’d hoped it would be?
Not for me.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews