Adults and Other Children, Miriam Cohen
Adults and Other Children, Miriam Cohen
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Adults and Other Children
Stories

Author: Miriam Cohen

Narrator: Jane Oppenheimer

Unabridged: 7 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/14/2020

Categories: Fiction, Short Stories

Synopsis

Adults and Other Children follows four women as they navigate life from the confusion and innocence of childhood to the bizarre and darkly humorous complexities of adulthood.Along the way, we meet a vindictive, and imaginary, nanny, who casts doubts about the true identity of a little girl’s new baby sister; a group of friends who spend their time obsessing over the gory details of a spate of recent crimes; a college professor who has her boss fired over an imagined sexual assault; and a Jewish woman who feigns ignorance in her religion, hoping to endear herself to an Orthodox widower.Time and again, the girls and women in this riveting debut collection fantasize and deceive to get what they want―or what they think they want―while we find ourselves drawn to their often surprising and all too human behavior.

About Miriam Cohen

Adults and Other Children is Miriam Cohen’s debut collection. Her stories have appeared in the Black Warrior Review, StoryQuarterly, West Branch Wired, Cream City Review, the Florida Review, DIAGRAM, The Collagist, Cimarron Review, Carve, the Bennington Review, Fugue, Hobart, Image, Witness, Electric Lit, and Third Coast. The recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

About Jane Oppenheimer

Jane Oppenheimer is an experienced narrator, voiceover artist, and actress with a bachelor's degree in theater from Carnegie Mellon University. She has narrated numerous audiobooks and has performed on stage in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Her voiceover work can be heard on commercials as well as corporate campaigns and short documentaries.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bandit

This read very much like the sort of book you’re supposed to appreciate, but don’t. It’s a vaguely interconnected collection of stories about women from early to middle ages, featuring authentic feminist perspectives or something like that. A manifesto of womanhood. An ode to estrogen. Coming of ag......more

Goodreads review by Lolly K Dandeneau

via my blog: [URL not allowed] 𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐬, 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟, 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭. I had been ill earlier this year and somehow forgot to post a review I had written for this collection of stor......more

Goodreads review by hiaa123

Adults and Other Children is a short story collection that follows four girls at different stages of life. I liked the stories told through children's perspectives the best. Short stories have this ability to be so unsettling in a way that novels don't. The latter stories when the characters are adu......more

Quotes

“An acute portrayal of failed relationships and struggles to transcend social norms.” New York Times Book Review

“Lies, misconceptions, and self-deception are at the heart of Miriam Cohen’s funny, scathing, and touching collection…When the heroines aren’t coping with loser boyfriends and lecherous bosses, they’re dealing with the fallout from their own messed-up families, wherein the adults are just as clueless as the kids.” Foreword Reviews

“Cohen’s fourteen stories offer an intimate examination of the complexities of her characters’ lives, particularly their struggles between compassion and obligation.” Booklist

“While the girls and women who inhabit Cohen’s fourteen stories share tangential relationships, what most binds this collection together is a sense of overpowering dread…A chilling view of womanhood—made up of lies, secrets, and fear—expressed in elegant prose.” Kirkus Reviews

“These shockingly insightful stories, riddled with breathtaking observation, are also, frequently, laugh out loud funny. Wisdom and hilarity are such a gorgeous couple, and Miriam Cohen makes the absolute most of this pairing. Evocative of Lorrie Moore at her sharpest best, Cohen’s is still an entirely new and very welcome voice.” Robin Black, author of Life Drawing

“In the weird and gorgeous tradition of Angela Carter and Kelly Link, Miriam Cohen has written a manifesto of postmodern womanhood. Her characters are hilariously neurotic, exquisitely self-diminishing, and yet grotesquely eloquent―perverse poets all, wandering the streets of New York or suffocating in the decorated living rooms of suburbia, trying their dire best to navigate life’s labyrinths.” Josh Gaylord, author of When We We’re Animals

"Adults & Other Children reimagines the Bildungsroman, as childhood clashes with adulthood to create a beautiful and terrifying emotional story. By stretching the misconceptions of children so thin and so wide, Miriam Cohen creates a glittering, transparent fabric through which we can finally read more clearly the myths that invent us.” Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk

Awards

  • New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
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