Make Me Work

the long version

Ralph Lombreglia's first collection of short stories, Men Under Water, established him as a powerful new voice in contemporary American fiction, the author of "sublime comic triumphs" (Douglas Seibold, The Chicago Tribune) that culminate in an "inexplicable, stunning illumination that shines suddenly on life and transforms it forever" (William Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review). In Make Me Work, Lombreglia offers nine new stories, many of them first published in The New Yorker or The Atlantic. With a delightful spontaneity that belies meticulous craft, Lombreglia presents a kaleidoscopic array of characters - young and old, male and female - captured at surprising, revealing moments of their lives. In the title story, a man finds himself, while having his hair cut, at the mercy of the best friend he betrayed. In "Late Early Man," video producers stumble from the marvels of technology into the miracle of life; in the sequel, "Heavy Lifting," the process is unforgettably reversed. "A Half Hour with God's Heroes" portrays a sharp, earthy working-class mother who tries to use the powers of a saint to escape her delinquent son. And in "Piltdown Man, Later Proved to Be a Hoax," the mysteries of race and class confront two schoolboys who play at an insane asylum. Heartfelt and charming, funny and serious, Make Me Work is a dazzling performance by a writer with "an unerring sense of the ridiculous, and a very subtle tenderness, too" (Richard Bausch, USA Today).