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    Damage Control: Stories
    Damage Control: Stories
    Damage Control: Stories
    Audiobook9 hours

    Damage Control: Stories

    Written by Amber Dermont

    Narrated by Eliza Foss, Danielle Ferland and David Aaron Baker

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    About this audiobook

    A luminous collection of short stories focusing on privilege and entitlement, from the bestselling author of The Starboard Sea Damage Control displays Amber Dermont's remarkable gift for portraying characters at crossroads. In " Lyndon," a daughter visits presidential landmarks following the death of her father. In " Damage Control," a young man works at an etiquette school while his girlfriend is indicted for embezzlement. A widow rents herself to elderly women and vacations with them as a " professional grandchild" in " Stella at the Winter Palace." And in " The Language of Martyrs" a couple houses a mail order bride on behalf of the husband' s Russian mother. Dermont's stories have previously been published in many literary magazines and have also been featured in anthologies edited by Jane Smiley and Dave Eggers. Damage Control includes three previously unpublished pieces.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 14, 2014
    ISBN9781490618852
    Author

    Amber Dermont

    Amber Dermont received her MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including Dave Eggers’s Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005, Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story, and Jane Smiley’s Best New American Voices 2006. A graduate of Vassar College, she received her Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. She currently serves as an associate professor of English and creative writing at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia.

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    Reviews for Damage Control

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    • 5/5
      When I heard that this was a book about "privilege and entitlement" I wasn't sure I would relate, but the characters, while all associated with upper crust society, are also down to earth. Wealth and privilege are a theme in each story but it's not all stuffy, Emily Gilmore-esque nonsense. Amber Dermont has created fictional people that are just as faulty, quirky, interesting and fallible as people I know.

      The great thing about short story collections is that if I don't like one of the stories I can just skip to the next one, but I didn't do that here. The first story starts out, "My father died because our house was infested with ladybugs." I was hooked from there on.

      I don't want to give away too many of the story lines, but if I could live vicariously through the characters in Damage Control I could say that I have now smoked pot in LBJ's amphibious car, stolen a Tiffany engagement ring, lived with a Russian mail-order bride, attended a school of southern etiquette, clogged the toilets on a cruise line by flushing an elderly woman's wig, and survived abduction by an Elvis lookalike who calls himself Messiah.

      That's not all, but you have to read it if you want to live vicariously yourself.

    • 4/5
      This book has changed my opinion on short stories. Absolutely loved Dermont's stories and different styles of writing.
    • 5/5
      I started reading and this was another book that kept me up all night. I did not want to put it down. Amber Dermont book leaves me wanting more. Very well written and interesting stories which make a great book to add to your library.Dermont's short story collection demonstrates the author's versatility and sardonic humor...Dermont delivers strong prose and intriguing characters who frequently defy stereotypical ideals...the overall effect is a tight collection that takes the reader in unexpected, often disconcerting, directions. Full of irony and contradictions, this compilation of contemporary short stories is a worthwhile effort.