My Dear You
Stories

Quotes

“Surreal and mind-bending, My Dear You proves Khong to be just as much a master of the short form as she is with the novel.” —Harper’s Bazaar

“That space between the infinite and the inevitably finite bookends My Dear You. It’s a tender, bizarro reckoning with marriage, infertility and friendship, among life’s other illusions. . . . The collection serves as a document of Khong’s thirties, a time when circles shrink and choices narrow.” —Los Angeles Times

“[Khong] shows off the kind of range suggested by her previous novel, the tripartite Real Americans published two years ago. Here, in the new collection, heavy subjects such as race and grief coexist with conjured spirits and a psychic cat, extraterrestrials and a God who has reconsidered the whole ‘human’ thing—and given everyone a deadline by which they’ll need to decide what other species they’d like to be instead.” —NPR

“A story collection that we can’t ignore. . . . Ten playful stories that limn the intricacies and varieties of love.” —The Boston Globe

“There’s a beautiful, effortless feel to these stories that makes them so highly readable (and I’m sure wasn’t effortless at all), and with it, Khong is able to sneak in abundant insights and a genuine depth that reveals itself unexpectedly. A thoroughly enjoyable collection.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade

“I couldn’t stop reading these sly, poignant, very funny stories about intimacy and friendship, work and death, longing and connection. Rachel Khong’s writing is so agile and fluid and charming that it can sneak up on you and knock you out.” —Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown

“Rachel Khong is one of our best observers of the human condition and isn’t afraid to take us to unreal realms in order to illuminate the very real strangeness about being alive right now, in this specific moment. In these stories, ghosts haunt toilet tanks, girls turn into animals, the dead get to choose new bodies for the afterlife, and sex dolls become friends. These fearlessly funny and smart stories are a joy.” —Rita Bullwinkel, author of Headshot

“My Dear You is a collection of wise stories whose wisdom sneaks up on you, delivered as it is in the guise of a joke. If this collection is a book of jokes, the jokes are the hysterical kind. You start out laughing, then realize you’re crying, without quite understanding what’s happened. Rachel Khong: comic, sage. I loved these bonkers stories so much.” —Vauhini Vara, author of This is Salvaged: Stories

“My Dear You is a garden of bravura, incandescent and explosive and compassionate all at once. Khong’s stories astound and comfort, expanding the form’s possibilities, guiding us through the familiar, and the deeply unknowable, in spectacular form. Khong is one of my favorite writers; My Dear You is one of my favorite books.” —Bryan Washington, author of Palaver

“Funny, inventive, and unforgettable.” —People

“These entertaining tales all display an unwavering confidence and facility and sense of internal cohesion, proving that Khong is an adept in both kinds of storytelling. . . . She shows a flair for evoking the quotidian people, places, and events of this life as well as the bizarre. . . . [My Dear You] possesses a kind of lightness or frothiness, along with a lacerating, understated comedy. . . . Khong’s brand of low-key yet often transgressive surrealism seems to me akin to a river down which one floats placidly in their innertube, taking in the sights, until finally reaching the waterfall that was always in wait, when one plunges over the edge, either into a whirlpool or, once in a while, aloft into the empyrean.” —Locus

“Khong writes tales of love in its many forms: being in love, not being in love, yearning to be in love, in the throes of unexpected yet wonderful lifelong friendships, and the intimate intertwining of love and grief. Read if you’re down to be existential.” —Electric Lit

“This collection is wonderful. The stories are a little quirky and comic, but also sharp and insightful.” —Chicago Review of Books

“In this daring collection, [Khong] offers ten stories that range from uncanny to piercing and mischievous to eerily predictive, with a whimsical sense of humor always on tap. Each story uses surreal premises to deliver a sly zinger of social commentary. . . . Khong’s imagination seems to know no bounds as she exploits the short story’s elasticity to brilliant, offbeat effect.” —Oprah Daily

“Funny and playful—and grappling with love, intimacy, and what it means to be human. The ten stories in the collection are all distinct and delightful . . . and will surely stick with you past the final page.” —Town & Country

“A thoughtful and masterful story collection about extraordinary choices, love, life, and the awkwardness of it all.” —Our Culture Mag

“Bold and delightful tales, which imbue off-kilter or lightly fantastic stories with emotional realism.” —Alta

“Stunning. . . . Clever and thought-provoking, all the stories in this volume by the author of Real Americans are wonderfully surreal and challenge emotion, limitations and mortality.” —Ms. Magazine

“Finely calibrated stories that balance playfulness with existential depth: precise and expansive, unapologetic in their form. They resist the industry’s impulse to market every collection as ‘linked’ or ‘novel-adjacent,’ aligning themselves with the short-story tradition as a capacious form in its own right, trusting the discrete power of each narrative while allowing thematic echoes to accumulate organically.” —BOMB