Tradeoffs
What if your whole life is a series of tradeoffs—until the final trade?
Bursting with inventiveness, David Galef’s newest collection of stories shifts between the long and short of things. From the minor to the magnificent, Tradeoffs follows itsmany characters toward their variousconclusions—sometimes logical, sometimes absurd, yet always true. Intricate in its construction and thrilling in its breadth, Tradeoffs pays off.
Praise & Reviews
Galef is very good at depicting self-dooming obsessives: the man who ruins his marriage by devoting himself to the discipline of levitation;
the one who does the same by compulsively berating motorists who speed through the crosswalk in front of his house; the one whose best, most engaged self he saves for chaste but ecstatic massages. “Duplicity” is a Nabokov-ian house of mirrors, an ingenious account of a 1948 love triangle film that’s embedded in the story of a similar triangle involving the principal actors. The book’s most luminous story may be its last, “Receding Portrait,” an account of the vulnerability and relentless loss—and underneath those, the flint and dignity—of old age.
–Kirkus Reviews
“Receding Portrait” takes readers on a fictional trip down the one-way staircase of old age, where a fall leads to hospitalization, hospitalization to rehab, rehab to recovery and recovery to another fall. What makes the story sing is the author’s ability to evoke the consciousness of an intelligent person in decline. “Sometimes I feel as if I changed from a boy to an old man overnight,” the narrator remarks. “But more often I feel like a gradually loaded container of years. I need to walk slowly or I’ll spill over.”
–Wall Street Journal
“Poignant, funny, angry, wise, and pleasurable. Can a story collection be a page turner? If so, Tradeoffs is.”
—Robert Shapard, author of Bare Ana
“Masterful . . . these tales highlight Galef’s versatility and keen insight, making this collection a must-read for fans of compelling and thought-provoking fiction.”
—Francine Witte, author of Radio Water
“Galef . . . is more bard than prophet, a professional storyteller with all his skills on full display here. Reading his newest collection felt like sitting next to a fire on a crisp summer night, having a cocktail or beer, and laughing with friends, hoping the night would never end.”
—Tommy Dean, author of Hollows