Publisher's Synopsis
Stories of uncanny originality from a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbour or lover, and the relationships between self and others. A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbour, who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible's specifications.
In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another.
It takes tremendous courage and wit to look with wonder at the darkest, most shameful places in the human heart and make them hilarious, tender, and deeply moving; Vauhini Vara, with her grand-scale compassion and moral complexity in This is Salvaged, can do this magic with astonishing ease. I've been a fan since I read the story "I, Buffalo" years ago, and am so glad to (finally!) have a collection of Vara's stories in hand to admire and love. - Lauren Groff, author of Matrix
