Description:
James Magruder's No One Is Looking at You-witty, moving stories of love, loss, connection: funny, heartbreaking.
Brief description: James Magruder has published four other books of fiction: Sugarless, Let Me See It, Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, and Vamp Until Ready (also from Rattling Good Yarns). Yale University Press published his Three French Comedies, a collection of translations that was cited as an "Outstanding Literary Translation of the Year" by the American Literary Translators Association; and The Play's the Thing: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theatre (1966-2016), his first-and last-book of non-fiction. His translations and adaptations of works by Marivaux, Molière, Lesage, Labiche, Gozzi, Dancourt, Hofmannsthal, Dickens, and Giraudoux have been produced off-Broadway, across the country, and in England, Japan, Australia, and Germany. He wrote, or co-wrote, the books for two Broadway musicals, Triumph of Love, and the more recent Head Over Heels, a deeply queer, blank verse mashup of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1590) and the song catalog of the Go-Go's. He is a five-time MacDowell Fellow and a 34-year resident of Baltimore.
Review Quotes:
"This is James Magruder's finest work-warm, funny, thoughtful, brash. These linked tales deal over and over again with the twin themes of expressing and accepting love. His is a world of interlocking figures-mother, siblings, lovers (both male and female), best friends, and enemies-in which no one is a winner or a loser, but each a part of the flawed fabric of the human. Magruder, who has produced wonderful theater, fascinating novels, and an exciting history of the Yale Repertory Theater, perhaps has found his métier in the short story. These stories are beautifully crafted, utterly delightful, and heart-wrenching. No One Is Looking at You is a book that everyone should read."
-David Bergman, Author of Plain Sight
"Sometimes you're lucky to come across a collection that resembles nothing so much as a party. Maybe you know some of the other guests, or maybe every story is a stranger, but either way, you stay up way too late, your consciousness expands, there are tasty snacks and delicious personal confidences, you get to know some fabulous characters, and you might even fall in love. No One Is Looking at You is funny, wistful, and the kind of party I hated to leave."
-Kelly Link, Author of Book of Love
"The assured stories in James Magruder's stunning new collection No One is Looking at You dig deep: into what it means to be human, into what it means to love and to lose, to discover oneself while also trying to connect, however awkwardly, with others. Magruder turns an unsentimental eye on just how messy, painful, but ultimately beautiful those human connections-made or missed-can be. What does it mean to be rejected? What does it mean to find one's soulmate and then be invited to navigate the (inevitable) pain of losing that someone? These stories ring with truth about how it feels to be young, and then...less young. They remind us that we humans are social beings, and how, ultimately, our tendency to need-and love-another, is nothing short of profound."
Janice Deal, author of The Blue Door and Strange Attractors: the Ephrem Stories