Alligator

by David Ryan

In Alligator, David Ryan's experiments in language and form produce 23 stark, lyrical stories that explore the human condition. Kaleidoscopic, surprising, and occasionally shocking, Ryan's liminal realism shifts between incantatory parables and a hard-scrabble, fractured reality, rooted in the deep, visceral logic of memory, wild impulse, and dream. Alligator's stories collect desire, dislocation of family, love, and estrangement into a brutalist architecture-where occasional sharp eruptions of chaos co-exist with hope and grace.

Genres: Short Stories

276 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2025

About the author

Author of the forthcoming Alligator (C4G Books) and winner of the 2022 and 2023 O. Henry Prize For Short Fiction, David Ryan‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Soft Union, Alaska Quarterly Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, The Common, The Threepenny Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fence, Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, The Hopkins Review, Puerto del Sol, the Potomac Review, Pinch, BOMB, and elsewhere.

He is the author of the story collection Animals in Motion: Stories (Roundabout Press) and a recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Elizabeth Yates McGreal Foundation, and the Connecticut Office of the Arts. He teaches in the writing program at Sarah Lawrence College and in New England College’s Low Residency MFA.

Reviews

[Claire Hopple]

Dark, precise, singular. Reinventing description at the sentence level.

[Delaney Sweet]

As always, the arc of the stories! The simple and arresting sentences!

[Bobby Vanecko]

beautiful writing

[Grace]

David Ryan weaves in and out of reality with the grace and precision of an Olympian’s skate on untouched ice. Each story carries a spectral rhythm within it that is somehow tangibly familiar.

[rshaffley]

This book is a beautiful exploration of language intertwined with the human condition. I adore the way Ryan writes, never lacking of vivid imagery. I’m not typically one for short stories, but I’m happy this novel was an exception.

Some of my favorite quotes:

“And what is a stranger anyways? Aren’t we all, forever?”

“When people leave us, the uncle said, sometimes they don’t leave so much as make a trade with the people they really loved. The outside part of them leaves, maybe. But the parts we loved. They just move inside us.”

There are a handful of passages that I wish I could include too. Many don’t have an inherent “profound meaning,” rather, they’re written so beautifully it’s touching. I will be thinking about this book for a long time.

[Jim Ivy]

Long distant journeys within a moment of time. A split second of recognition that changes everything that will ever happen. A casual remembrance that collects generations of glories and agonies.These stories are brilliantly crafted and extraordinarily revealed. One of the best collections of short stories I’ve ever read.

[S]

Dark, lyrical and psychologically complex stories.

[Cynthia Bond]

Stopped ready after two chapters. Not a good mystery book