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My Stalkers: Stories
Not yet published
Expected 19 Jan 27Cementing her mastery across genres, Catherine Lacey returns with a new collection of visceral and absurdist short fiction.
Across the nine stories in My Stalkers, Catherine Lacey’s second collection of short fiction, women are constantly confronted with the thrill, banality, and horror of becoming someone else—or no one at all—on account of men, technology, bureaucracy, or their own folly.
A woman finds a coat that isn’t hers in the house, and its appearance sets off a chain of events that destroys her life as she knew it. A mountain, one kilometer high, spontaneously materializes in rural Kansas, composed entirely of semiconscious men, provoking a female amateur athlete to climb it. An American living in Mexico is forced to face her irrevocable dependence on her home country, and the fragility of her own identity, when her passport is stolen. A woman is charged with a crime her all-seeing government insists it has photographic evidence of her committing, though she insists it was a doppelgänger, and while attempting to dispute the charge, the Kafkaesque bureaucracy becomes increasingly manipulative. And in the title story, a woman desperate to live any life but her own works as a Life Rotator, anonymously shuffled between a series of sparsely furnished homes in average American cities; her stalker finds her anyway, and threatens to topple her artificial stability.
With penetrating insights into the absurdities of modern life, Lacey once again reveals the disquieting and darkly humorous forces at work beneath the surface of the ordinary.
Across the nine stories in My Stalkers, Catherine Lacey’s second collection of short fiction, women are constantly confronted with the thrill, banality, and horror of becoming someone else—or no one at all—on account of men, technology, bureaucracy, or their own folly.
A woman finds a coat that isn’t hers in the house, and its appearance sets off a chain of events that destroys her life as she knew it. A mountain, one kilometer high, spontaneously materializes in rural Kansas, composed entirely of semiconscious men, provoking a female amateur athlete to climb it. An American living in Mexico is forced to face her irrevocable dependence on her home country, and the fragility of her own identity, when her passport is stolen. A woman is charged with a crime her all-seeing government insists it has photographic evidence of her committing, though she insists it was a doppelgänger, and while attempting to dispute the charge, the Kafkaesque bureaucracy becomes increasingly manipulative. And in the title story, a woman desperate to live any life but her own works as a Life Rotator, anonymously shuffled between a series of sparsely furnished homes in average American cities; her stalker finds her anyway, and threatens to topple her artificial stability.
With penetrating insights into the absurdities of modern life, Lacey once again reveals the disquieting and darkly humorous forces at work beneath the surface of the ordinary.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
Kindle Edition
Expected publication January 19, 2027
About the author
Catherine Lacey
29 books1,544 followersCatherine Lacey is the author of six books. Her honors include a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Lambda Award for Lesbian Fiction and the 2021 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award. She has been twice a finalist for both the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Jean Stein Book Award. She lives in México.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. A wonderful book of short stories from one of the most interesting authors. A woman hopes to start the next chapter of her life by moving with her husband to Mexico, but finds herself still tethered to America after she loses her passport. A woman travels to Kansas to climb a mountain of semi conscious men. A woman pays a bunch of fines for jaywalking, even though the person in the photographic evidence is not her. Another keeps a very low threat stalker for over twenty years and doesn’t know exactly how to feel about it. So much fun to spend time with this constantly surprising mind.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
Bizarre and unsettling! Absolutely ate these stories up, especially Rate Your Happiness.
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August 16, 2026My favorite story in this collection is "Cut." SO GOOD!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews