Wild Failure, Zoe Whittall
Wild Failure, Zoe Whittall
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Wild Failure
Stories

Author: Zoe Whittall

Narrator: Hillary Huber

Unabridged: 4 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/20/2024


Synopsis

A dazzling debut collection of ten powerful, feminist, and queer short stories from bestselling author Zoe Whittall

“Absorbing and wrenchingly intimate, with a rare balance of wit and tenderness.”—Jenny Fran Davis, author of Dykette

In Wild Failure, characters encounter feelings of shame, desire, attachment, and disconnection as they find themselves navigating their way through bad decisions, unusual situations, and fraught relationships.

In “Oh, El,” a dominant woman can’t stop herself from toying with the tender heart of her co-worker. The title story, “Wild Failure,” is a doomed love story between an agoraphobic and a wilderness hiker. In “Half-Pipe,” a teen girl’s heterosexual ambivalence results in chaos at a skate park. A group of idealistic roommates find themselves the subject of a true crime podcast in “Murder at the Elm Street Collective House.” In “The Sex Castle Lunch Buffet,” a woman reflects on her brief stint at a nineties strip club after she learns of the death of a former client.

Wild Failure is replete with Whittall’s perceptive humor and acute insights into human nature. It’s also a dynamic and vibrant collection of poetic fiction that contend with the meaning of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness.

About The Author

Zoe Whittall is the author of five novels, including the recent bestseller The Fake, which was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. The New York Times called her fourth novel The Spectacular, “a highly readable testament to the strength of the maternal bond.” Her third novel The Best Kind of People was shortlisted for The Scotiabank-Giller Prize. Her second novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible won a Lambda Award, and was an American Library Association’s Stonewall Honor Book. Her debut novel Bottle Rocket Hearts won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie prize. She is also a Canadian Screen Award winning TV writer. She lives in Prince Edward County.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Raaven💖 on April 28, 2024

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review! This was a weird little short story collection. All of the stories revolved around different experiences of queer women. Some of them got under my skin. I appreciated the way it explored aging and being queer. Mo......more

Goodreads review by Manleen on October 26, 2024

I don’t know what made me read a book about short stories? I think I just liked the cover. Some of the stories were interesting others seemed pointless to me. I like how most of them were set in Canada and I could recognize places!......more

Goodreads review by Kira on August 28, 2024

Big Zoe Whittall fan here, and not just because she writes about things so close to my heart. Like being a queer woman, and mental health struggles, and living in Ontario! This was a really great collection of short stories. I would like to meet Zoe and say wow holy shit you made me feel so seen, th......more

Goodreads review by Jesaka on January 23, 2025

I always enjoy Zoe Whittall's books and could not wait to read her short story collection WILD FAILURE. It delivers. The 10 stories in this collection offer a range of characters who make mistakes and mess things up, but feel like people who could be the local skate park or live in your neighborhood......more

Goodreads review by Stroop on April 16, 2024

A lovely, engrossing, and often heartbreaking collection of 10 short stories. I’ve enjoyed previous works by the author and this was no exception. Each story offers us a glimpse of a woman dealing with the realities of living in a man’s world. There is violence, disregard, disrespect and the women de......more


Quotes

“These stories are all about women: wild women, loose women, murderous women, regretful women, and more. These stories are funny, and yet so acutely aware of things you never realized yourself. They all reflect the common theme of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness. I read this entire book in one night, and then reread it two days later when I didn’t want to leave my bed. My thoughts have been consumed ever since.”Betches

“Phenomenal . . . Whittall compresses entire worlds into the most alive of sentences.”—Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

“These beautiful stories of longing and connection vibrate with emotional honesty and sharp detail. . . . A dirty, tender collection.”—Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)fertility

“Rigorously humane, funny, and forgiving—you know these characters well.”—Donovan Woods, musician

“How do I describe this short story collection that distracted me from my cooking and almost caused me to burn my dinner? It’s like Zoe Whittall cut these slice-of-life stories with a serrated knife whose blade is sharp enough that we see an expert storyteller in her element and dull enough that the wounds of her characters hurt so good.”—Catherine Hernandez, author of Scarborough