Cara Blue Adams is the author of You Never Get It Back.
“A modern classic of a collection, as effortless in its idiom as it is fearless in its consideration of contemporary life. These stories left me breathless.”
— Brandon Taylor
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Prize, judged by Brandon Taylor
Longlisted for The Story Prize
Shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy Prize
About the book.
In thirteen elegant and perceptive stories, You Never Get It Back offers glimpses of the life of Kate Bishop, a young woman from rural New England, moving between her childhood in the countryside of Vermont and her twenties and early thirties in the northeast, southwest, and South in search of a vocation, first as a research scientist and later as a writer. Place is a palpable presence: Boston in winter, Maine in summer, Virginia's lush hillsides, the open New Mexico sky. Along the way, we meet Kate's difficult, bohemian mother and younger sister, her privileged college roommate, and the various men Kate dates as she struggles to define what she wants from the world on her own terms.
Wryly funny and complex, shot through with surprising flashes of anger, these smart, searching stories show us a young woman grappling with class and privilege, gender, ambition, violence, and the distance between longing and having. Ultimately, this wistful and intimate collection asks how a person can transcend what the world expects of her to make a life with others that is truly her own.
Praise.
“Cara Blue Adams’s evocative first book is described as a collection of interlinked short stories, though it could easily be classified as a novel without the padding . . . Adams succeeds in capturing the microcosm of a young woman’s ordinary struggle in modern America, and it turns out to be pretty devastating.”
— The New York Times
“The structural originality and expansive sweep of stories in You Never Get It Back reveal a writer of impressive insight and technical virtuosity. The depth and urgency of these stories brought to mind Alice Munro’s great collection Runaway. As there, these stories crackle with restless vitality as women come up against the constraints of their circumstances and what it means to be in the world. Cara Blue Adams has written a modern classic of a collection, as effortless in its idiom as it is fearless in its consideration of contemporary life. These stories left me breathless.”
— Brandon Taylor, author of Filthy Animals
“Adams’s ornate linked collection comprises snapshots of a woman’s life at various points of change . . . a dynamic and memorable character study.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, Cara Blue Adams’s keenly observed collection of linked stories is the perfect companion for long winter nights. Remarkably expansive within a limited space, the pieces here conjure such masters of the form as Munro and Beattie while staking out a territory all their own. Following the character Kate from her early days in Vermont through her struggles to define herself later in life, You Never Get It Back is a book you’ll want to hold onto.”
— Chicago Review of Books, 12 MUST-READ BOOKS OF DECEMEMBER
“Adams’ linked collection captures the life of Kate—a young New England woman navigating her twenties and thirties—with humor, tenderness, and poise.”
— The Millions, DECEMBER PREVIEW: THE MILLIONS MOST ANTICIPATED
“In a series of linked stories where place (from Maine to Virginia to New Mexico) is at the forefront, Cara Blue Adams explores class, gender, longing, and violence. It’s a sensitive and thought-provoking collection filled with somber moments and strong and unforgettable characters.”
— Debutiful, 9 DEBUT BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ THIS NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER
“Breathtakingly poised and possessed of a daring, interrogative delicacy, Cara Blue Adams’s stories are portholes into the inner lives of characters built with such depth of feeling that you feel you could walk around inside them for hours. Saturated with longing, loss, and brilliant plumes of joy, this is the kind of book you hold close to your heart and carry with you for years to come.”
— Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun
“Searching and wise and unfailingly insightful, You Never Get It Back is a book that aliens could study to learn a great deal, and in depth, about the highs, lows, and wild vagaries of being human. Profound and vital reading.”
— R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
“These marvelous linked stories follow Kate as she navigates the turbulent waters of early adulthood, friendship, and romance. Cara Blue Adams probes the depths of the heart with sensitivity and incisiveness. Whip smart and witty, surefooted and pitch-perfect, You Never Get It Back is a terrific debut.”
— Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of The Five Wounds
“Cara Blue Adams writes with immense sensitivity and precision, transforming seemingly ordinary moments into radiant insight, as she charts Kate’s journey through landscapes and relationships, solitude and connection, bliss and grief. As she moves through time, Kate begins to understand—as do we—that the questions might matter even more than the answers. You Never Get It Back is a stunning debut, marking the arrival of an original and thrilling new voice.”
— Laura van den Berg, author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
“This moving collection of stories is one of my favorite of recent years. By turns epiphanic and elegiac, these stories mostly follow a young woman, Kate, who’s escaped the madness (in the literal sense) and grinding poverty of her rural New England family, but struggles—in each story—to make sense of the privileged world in which she’s landed. Each story functions as both its own complete universe—like a miniature novel—and a piece of Kate’s poignant, complicated coming of age. I loved Kate so ridiculously much, at times I found myself thinking of her as a real person, a friend. . . . These are stories for the ages, which will remind you of the greats, from Bobbie Ann Mason to Joy Williams to, with their sly humor, Curtis Sittenfeld.”
— Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
About the author.
Cara Blue Adams is the author of the interlinked story collection You Never Get It Back (University of Iowa Press, 2021), named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and awarded the John Simmons Short Fiction Prize, judged by Brandon Taylor, who calls it “a modern classic.” The collection was shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy Prize and longlisted for the Story Prize. Over twenty-five of her stories appear in magazines like the Granta, The Kenyon Review, Epoch, American Short Fiction, and Electric Literature, and her nonfiction appears in Bookforum and The Believer.
She has received the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, the Missouri Review William Peden Prize, and the Meringoff Prize in Fiction, along with a 2018 Center for Fiction Emerging Writer fellowship and selection as a Pushcart Prize Notable. She has also received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the VCCA, the Lighthouse Works, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Cara earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Originally from Vermont, she has lived in Boston, Tucson, Montreal, Maine, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge. She is a former coeditor of The Southern Review. Currently, she is an associate professor in the MFA program at Temple University and lives in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley.
Contact.
Literary inquiries: Claudia Ballard @ CBallard@wmeagency.com