Music Through the Floor, Eric Puchner
Music Through the Floor, Eric Puchner
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Music Through the Floor
Stories

Author: Eric Puchner

Narrator: Ali Andre Ali, Michael Crouch, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Jeremy Carlisle Parker

Unabridged: 7 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/06/2025

Synopsis

From the author of the Oprah Book Club Pick Dream State, an extraordinary debut collection of nine unforgettable stories—strikingly original, fiercely funny, and quietly heartbreaking—portraying a group of misfits attempting to navigate mainstream America.

Writing from an impressive range of perspectives—men and women, children and adults, immigrants and tourists—Puchner deftly exposes the dark, tender undersides of his characters with arresting beauty and precision. Here are people fumbling for identity in a dehumanizing world, captured in moments that are hilarious, shocking, and transcendent, sometimes all at once. Unfailingly true, surprisingly moving, and impossible to forget, these stories make up an extraordinary and strikingly original collection.

About Eric Puchner

Eric Puchner is the author of the story collection Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award; the novel Model Home, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction; a second short story collection, Last Day on Earth; and a second novel, Dream State, an Oprah Book Club Pick. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, Tin House, Best American Short Stories, and more. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.      

Reviews

Goodreads review by Robin on April 15, 2019

Worth reading for the Leda and the Swan "essay" alone. The author has a particular way with slow buildup and abrupt, almost freefall endings. Like, if you graphed the stories they would look like a series of long isosceles triangles lying on their sides.......more

Goodreads review by Joachim on November 19, 2019

If I could compile a best of-mix from both Music through the floor and and Puchner's Last day on earth, it would probably be in my top 10 all time short story collections. But in both books there were weaker attempts. Still a very fine writer to follow in the future......more

Goodreads review by Bill on January 27, 2008

I am somewhat chagrined to admit that it's taken me quite awhile to get around to reading this (even though I have been recommending it in various bookstore jobs I've had for several years now), but I am very glad that I did. A, and I, knew Eric from when we lived in San Francisco; and I always felt......more

Goodreads review by Kalie on April 19, 2008

Wow.. Amazing doesn't even begin to say it. I will read anything this man put's to paper. The improbable combination of being supremely depressing and inspiring, makes me yearn for more.......more

Goodreads review by Samantha on March 29, 2012

These stories are incredible. Each one had a strikingly original plot and the perfect mix of humor and sadness. If I could write like anyone in the world, it might be Eric Puchner.......more

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