Stories from the Tube — Matthew Sharpe

In Stories from the Tube, Matthew Sharpe spins ten unique and unforgettable tales inspired by the most mundane, ubiquitous texts in our culture: television commercials. With echoes of writers as diverse as Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Borges, and David Foster Wallace, these stories create a world in which the utterly normal and the utterly surreal collide, shatter, and reassemble themselves, where the totally insane and hilarious and the deeply moving occupy the same space. In the process, they speak volumes about how television reflects and distorts our imaginations and emotional lives, and how it both creates and destroys the mythology of the American family.
        In "Doctor Mom," a suburban mother practices medicine illegally out of her home after being stripped of her medical license. In "How I Greet My Daughter," an agoraphobic, misanthropic woman wakes to the smell of brewing coffee and realizes her grown daughter has moved in. In "Cloud," a young publishing executive traveling by airplane meets a mysterious lover whose touch is as cold and vapor-ous as a cloud. In "The Woman Who," a New York woman finds the needy and desperate beating a path to her door after she briefly and inexplicably turned into Marilyn Mon-roe during a matinee of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
        By turns haunting, savagely funny, and unexpectedly touching, Stories from the Tube is the striking debut of a writer of uncommon talent and vision.