We Live in Water: Stories Audiobook

Quotes

• “Brims with humanity.”

  — Entertainment Weekly

• “…gritty, pitch-perfect collection…Walter wrings enlightenment from dark realities.”

  — People

• “[A] badass collection…gritty, big-hearted.”

  — Esquire

• “Although he is best known as a novelist who writes of knockabout characters in dead-end situations, Mr. Walter brings that outlook to short-story writing easily, and with a vengeance.”

  — New York Times

• “Walter’s got a great ear and a genius for sympathy with America’s new dispossessed.”

  — NPR’s All Things Considered

• “It is perhaps a grim and fatalistic vision that Jess Walter presents in We Live in Water, yet one that in today’s America seems all-too-recognizable; no, we may not all live in water, but at one time or another, we have all lived in Spokane.”

  — San Francisco Chronicle

• “Deliver[s] unexpected laughs while playing with what it is we think we know…As a reader, I delight in Walter’s work. As a writer (humor me here), I curse. He’s so freakishly, fiendishly good, it isn’t fair.”

  — Seattle Times

• “With a cineaste’s eye, [Walter] mov[es] the action at a terrific pace, such velocity and narrative swing…What he makes us understand is bracing, clear. Fiction or no, it is here we see Walter as trusted interlocutor, saying, let me show you, this is where we are now.”

  — Oregonian

• “Each word is perfectly placed…Walter’s semiserious ode, ‘Statistical Abstract for my Hometown of Spokane, Washington’…brings his first story collection to a smashing end.”

  — Daily Beast

• “The debut story collection from Walter proves he’s as skilled at satire and class commentary in the short form as in his novels…Walter’s prose is straightforward and funny…A witty and sobering snapshot of recession-era America.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• “Walter writes—beautifully—about hard luck divorced dads, addicts, con artists, working men trying to keep things together, and a few zombies who’ve made the Seattle of the future look a lot like the Spokane of the present…Darkly funny, sneakily sad, these stories are very, very good. You know the way websites recommend books by saying if you liked this, you’ll like that? The algorithm for this debut collection is straightforward: if you like to read, you’ll like this book.”

  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “With a signature blend of wicked humor and heartbreaking tenderness, Walter’s intense stories speak directly to the contemporary American experience…Wildly entertaining and thought-provoking fiction from a prodigiously talented writer.”

  — Booklist (starred review)