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A Best Book of 2023 - Publisher's Weekly, Electric Literature, Chicago Public LibraryLONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 STORY PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE"Alejandro Varela's The People Who Report More Stress: Stories is a master class in analyzing the unspoken." --The New York Times"A searing collection about gentrification, racism, and sexuality." --Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) The People Who Report More Stress is a collection of interconnected stories brimming with the anxieties of people who retreat into themselves while living in the margins, acutely aware of the stresses that modern life takes upon the body and the body politic. In "Midtown-West Side Story," Álvaro, a restaurant worker struggling to support his family, begins selling high-end designer clothes to his co-workers, friends, neighbors, and the restaurant's regulars in preparation for a move to the suburbs. "The Man in 512" tracks Manny, the childcare worker for a Swedish family, as he observes the comings and goings of an affluent co-op building, all the while teaching the children Spanish through Selena's music catalog. "Comrades" follows a queer man with radical politics who just ended a long-term relationship and is now on the hunt for a life partner. With little tolerance for political moderates, his series of speed dates devolve into awkward confrontations that leave him wondering if his approach is the correct one. A collection of humorous, sexy, and highly neurotic tales about parenting, long-term relationships, systemic and interpersonal racism, and class conflict from the author of the National Book Award finalist The Town of Babylon, The People Who Report More Stress deftly and poignantly expresses the frustration of knowing the problems and solutions to our society's inequities but being unable to do anything about them.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781662601071
- ISBN-10: 1662601077
- Publisher: Astra House
- Publish Date: April 2023
- Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.75 pounds
- Page Count: 256
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Alejandro Varela’s short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress, explores many of the same themes as his debut novel, the National Book Award finalist The Town of Babylon (2022). With biting humor, a sharp eye for the weird details that define places and relationships, a delightful sense of play and a lot of heart, he examines the intersecting lives of a group of mostly queer and Latinx New York City residents. And though many of these characters are preoccupied with similar problems and anxieties—systemic racism, gentrification, alienation and loneliness, the challenges of long-term partnership, 21st-century parenting, economic injustice and more—they are all wonderfully specific and react to life’s ups and downs in their own ways. The result is a collection that feels cohesive, thematically complex and continually surprising all at once.
One of Varela’s many strengths is the way he uses humor to cut through all the static and get to the heart of a character or situation. He seems to have an endless supply of this humor, which can be dry and witty, bleak and a little sad, or biting and satirical. In one story, a United Nations employee describes the office politics and hookup culture of the various ambassadors, politicians and aides he works with. It’s a little ridiculous and seems downright absurd at times, but it never tips over the edge into total camp. In another story, a nanny for a wealthy Swedish family ponders the (again, often absurd) happenings within their co-op building. Varela plays with this edge, blurring the line between the everyday and the extraordinary, heightening the contrasts and contradictions that exist in our stratified world in a way that makes everything he writes feel charged.
Many of the stories are interconnected, and several feature an interracial gay couple, Gus and Eduardo, as they navigate their changing relationship over the years. The stories that center on parenting, family dynamics and intimate domestic moments are especially poignant, as are the hilarious but never flippant stories about internet dating.
The People Who Report More Stress blends humor and social commentary with the thing that drives the best fiction: an honest and vulnerable exploration of messy human relationships. Fans of Varela’s first novel, as well as newcomers to his work, will find a lot to love in this collection.
Alejandro Varela’s short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress, explores many of the same themes as his debut novel, the National Book Award finalist The Town of Babylon (2022). With biting humor, a sharp eye for the weird details that define places and relationships, a delightful sense of play and a lot of heart, he examines the intersecting lives of a group of mostly queer and Latinx New York City residents. And though many of these characters are preoccupied with similar problems and anxieties—systemic racism, gentrification, alienation and loneliness, the challenges of long-term partnership, 21st-century parenting, economic injustice and more—they are all wonderfully specific and react to life’s ups and downs in their own ways. The result is a collection that feels cohesive, thematically complex and continually surprising all at once.
One of Varela’s many strengths is the way he uses humor to cut through all the static and get to the heart of a character or situation. He seems to have an endless supply of this humor, which can be dry and witty, bleak and a little sad, or biting and satirical. In one story, a United Nations employee describes the office politics and hookup culture of the various ambassadors, politicians and aides he works with. It’s a little ridiculous and seems downright absurd at times, but it never tips over the edge into total camp. In another story, a nanny for a wealthy Swedish family ponders the (again, often absurd) happenings within their co-op building. Varela plays with this edge, blurring the line between the everyday and the extraordinary, heightening the contrasts and contradictions that exist in our stratified world in a way that makes everything he writes feel charged.
Many of the stories are interconnected, and several feature an interracial gay couple, Gus and Eduardo, as they navigate their changing relationship over the years. The stories that center on parenting, family dynamics and intimate domestic moments are especially poignant, as are the hilarious but never flippant stories about internet dating.
The People Who Report More Stress blends humor and social commentary with the thing that drives the best fiction: an honest and vulnerable exploration of messy human relationships. Fans of Varela’s first novel, as well as newcomers to his work, will find a lot to love in this collection.